"If she is barren, then a son must be adopted," said the old gentleman.

"To adopt twice in succession is unlucky," objected Mr. Fujinami Gentaro.

"Then," said Mrs. Shidzuye, "the old woman of Akabo shall come for consultation. She shall tell if it is possible for her to have babies."

Akabo was the up-country village, whence the first Fujinami had come to Tokyo to seek his fortune. The Japanese never completely loses touch with his ancestral village; and for over a hundred years the Tokyo Fujinami had paid their annual visit to the mountains of the North to render tribute to the graves of their forefathers. They still preserved an inherited faith in the "wise woman" of the district, who from time to time was summoned to the capital to give her advice. Their other medical counselor was Professor Kashio, who held degrees from Munich and Vienna.

* * * * *

During the first days of her self-chosen widowhood Asako was little better than a convalescent. She had never looked at sorrow before; and the shock of what she had seen had paralyzed her vitality without as yet opening her understanding. Like a dog, who in the midst of his faithful affection has been struck for a fault of which he is unconscious, she took refuge in darkness, solitude and despair.

The Japanese, who are as a rule intuitively aware of others' emotions, recognized her case. A room was prepared for her in a distant wing of the straggling house, a "foreign-style" room in an upper story with glass in the windows—stained glass too—with white muslin blinds, a colored lithograph of Napoleon and a real bed, recently purchased on Sadako's pleading that everything must be done to make life happy for their guest.

"But she is a Japanese," Mr. Fujinami Gentaro had objected. "It is not right that a Japanese should sleep upon a tall bed. She must learn to give up luxurious ways."

Sadako protested that her cousin's health was not yet assured; and so discipline was relaxed for a time.

Asako spent most of her days in the tall bed, gazing through the open doorway, across the polished wood veranda like the toffee veranda of a confectioner's model, past the wandering branch of an old twisted pine-tree which crouched by the side of the mansion like a faithful beast, over the pigmy landscape of the garden, to the scale-like roofs of the distant city, and to the pagoda on the opposite hill.

It rested her to lie thus and look at her country. From time to time Sadako would steal into the room. Her cousin would leave the invalid in silence, but she always smiled; and she would bring some offering with her, a dish of food—Asako's favorite dishes, of which Tanaka had already compiled a complete list—or sometimes a flower. At the open door she would pause to shuffle off her pale blue zori (sandals); and she would glide across the clean rice-straw matting shod in her snow-white tabi only.

Asako gradually accustomed herself to the noises of the house. First, there was the clattering of the amado, the wooden shutters whose removal announced the beginning of the day, then the gurgling and the expectorations which accompanied the family ablutions, then the harsh sound of the men's voices and their rattling laughter, the sound of their geta on the gravel paths of the garden like the tedious dropping of heavy rain on an iron roof, then the flicking and dusting of the maids as they went about their daily soji (house-cleaning), their shrill mouselike chirps and their silly giggle; then the afternoon stillness when every one was absent or sleeping; and then, the revival of life and bustle at about six o'clock, when the clogs were shuffled off at the front door, when the teacups began to jingle, and when sounds of swishing water came up from the bath-house, the crackle of the wood-fire under the bathtub, the smell of the burning logs, and the distant odours of the kitchen.

Outside, the twilight was beginning to gather. A big black crow flopped lazily on to the branch of the neighbouring pine-tree. His harsh croak disturbed Asako's mind like a threat. High overhead passed a flight of wild geese in military formation on their way to the continent of Asia. Lights began to peep among the trees. Behind the squat pagoda a sky of raspberry pink closed the background.

The twilight is brief in Japan. The night is velvety; and the moonlight and the starlight transfigure the dolls' house architecture, the warped pine-trees, the feathery bamboo clumps and the pagoda spires.

From a downstair room there came the twang of cousin Sadako's koto, a kind of zither instrument, upon which she played interminable melancholy sonatas of liquid, detached notes, like desultory thoughts against a background of silence. There was no accompaniment to this music and no song to chime with it; for, as the Japanese say, the accompaniment for koto music is the summer night-time and its heavy fragrance, and the voice with which it harmonizes is the whisper of the breeze in the pine-branches.

Long after Sadako had finished her practice, came borne upon the distance the still more melancholy pipe of a student's flute. This was the last human sound. After that the night was left to the orchestra of the insects—the grasshoppers, the crickets and the semi (cicadas). Asako soon was able to distinguish at least ten or twelve different songs, all metallic in character, like clock springs being slowly wound up and then let down with a run. The night and the house vibrated with these infinitesimal chromatics. Sometimes Asako thought the creatures must have got into her room, and feared for entanglements in her hair. Then she remembered that her mother's nickname had been "the Semi" and that she had been so called because she was always happy and singing in her little house by the river.

This memory roused Asako one day with a wish to see how her own house was progressing. This wish was the first positive thought which had stirred her mind since her husband had left her; and it marked a stage in her convalescence.

"If the house is ready," she thought "I will go there soon. The Fujinamis will not want me to live here permanently."

This showed how little she understood as yet the Japanese family system, whereby relatives remain as permanent guests for years on end.

"Tanaka" she said one morning, in what was almost her old manner, "I think I will have the motor car to-day."

Tanaka had become her body servant as in the old days. At first she had resented the man's reappearance, which awakened such cruel memories. She had protested against him to Sadako, who had smiled and promised. But Tanaka continued his ministrations; and Asako had not the strength to go on protesting. As a matter of fact, he was specially employed by Mr. Fujinami Gentaro to spy on Asako's movements, an easy task hitherto, since she had not moved from her room.

"Where is the motor car, Tanaka?" she asked again.

He grinned, as Japanese always do when embarrassed.

"Very sorry for you," he answered; "motor car has gone away."

"Has Captain Barrington—?" Asako began instinctively; then, remembering that Geoffrey was now many thousands of miles from Japan, she turned her face to the wall and began to cry.

"Young Fujinami San," said Tanaka, "has taken motor car. He go away to mountains with geisha girl. Very bad, young Fujinami San, very roue."

Asako thought that it was rather impertinent to borrow her own motor car without asking permission, even if she was their guest. She did not yet understand that she and all her possessions belonged from henceforth to her family—to her male relatives, that is to say; for she was only a woman.

"Old Mr. Fujinami San," Tanaka went on, happy to find his mistress, to whom he was attached in a queer Japanese sort of way, interested and responsive at last, "old Mr. Fujinami San, he also go to mountain with geisha girl, but different mountain. Japanese people all very roue. All Japanese people like to go away in summer season with geisha girl. Very bad custom. Old Mr. Fujinami San, not so very bad, keep same geisha girl very long time. Perhaps Ladyship see one little girl, very nice little girl, come sometimes with Miss Sadako and bring meal-time things. That little girl is geisha girl's daughter. Perhaps old Mr. Fujinami San's daughter also, I think: very bastard: I don't know!"

So he rambled on in the fashion of servants all the world over, until Asako knew all the ramifications of her relatives, legitimate and illegitimate.

She gathered that the men had all left Tokyo during the hot season, and that only the women were left in the house. This encouraged her to descend from her eyrie, and to endeavour to take up her position in her family, which was beginning to appear the less reassuring the more she learned about its history.

The life of a Japanese lady of quality is peculiarly tedious. She is relieved from the domestic cares which give occupation to her humbler sisters. But she is not treated as an equal or as a companion by her menfolk, who are taught that marriage is for business and not for pleasure, and consequently that home-life is a bore. She is supposed to find her own amusements, such as flower-arrangement, tea-ceremony, music, kimono-making and the composition of poetry. More often, this refined and innocent ideal degenerates into a poor trickle of an existence, enlivened only by scrappy magazine reading, servants' gossip, empty chatter about clothes, neighbours and children, backbiting, envying and malice.

Once Sadako took her cousin to a charity entertainment given for the Red Cross at the house of a rich nobleman. A hundred or more ladies were present; but stiff civility prevailed. None of the guests seemed to know each other. There was no friendly talking. There were no men guests. There was three hours' agony of squatting, a careful adjustment of expensive kimonos, weak tea and tasteless cakes, a blank staring at a dull conjuring performance, and deadly silence.

"Do you ever have dances?" Asako asked her cousin.

"The geisha dance, because they are paid," said Sadako primly. Her pose was no longer cordial and sympathetic. She set herself up as mentor to this young savage, who did not know the usages of civilized society.

"No, not like that," said the girl from England; "but dancing among yourselves with your men friends."

"Oh, no, that would not be nice at all. Only tipsy persons would dance like that."

Asako tried, not very successfully, to chat in easy Japanese with her cousin; but she fled from the interminable talking parties of her relatives, where she could not understand one word, except the innumerable parentheses—naruhodo (indeed!) and so des'ka (is it so?)—with which the conversation was studded. As the realization of her solitude made her nerves more jumpy, she began to imagine that the women were forever talking about her, criticizing her unfavorably and disposing of her future.

The only man whom she saw during the hot summer months, besides the inevitable Tanaka, was Mr. Ito, the lawyer. He could talk quite good English. He was not so egotistical and bitter as Sadako. He had traveled in America and Europe. He seemed to understand the trouble of Asako's mind, and would offer sympathetic advice.

"It is difficult to go to school when we are no longer children," he would say sententiously. "Asa San must be patient. Asa San must forget. Asa San must take Japanese husband. I think it is the only way."

"Oh, no," the poor girl shivered; "I wouldn't marry again for anything."

"But," Ito went on relentlessly, "it is hurtful to the body when once it has custom to be married. I think that is reason why so many widow women are unfortunate and become mad."

Every day he would spend an hour or so in conversation with Asako. She thought that this was a sign of friendliness and sympathy. As a matter of fact, his object at first was to improve his English. Later on more ambitious projects developed in his fertile brain.

He would talk about New York and London in his queer stilted way. He had been a fireman on board ship, a teacher of jiujitsu, a juggler, a quack dentist, Heaven knows what else. Driven by the conscientious inquisitiveness of his race, he had endured hardships, contempt and rough treatment with the smiling patience inculcated in the Japanese people by their education. "We must chew our gall, and bide our time," they say, when the too powerful foreigner insults or abuses them.

He had seen the magnificence of our cities, the vastness of our undertakings and had returned to Japan with great relief to find that life among his own people was less strenuous and fierce, that it was ordered by circumstances and the family system, that less was left to individual courage and enterprise, that things happened more often than things were done. The impersonality of Japan was as restful to him as it is aggravating to a European.

But it must not be imagined that Ito was an idle man. On the contrary, he was exceedingly hard working and ambitious. His dream was to become a statesman, to enjoy unlimited patronage, to make men and to break men, and to die a peer. When he returned to Japan from his wanderings with exactly two shillings in his pocket, this was his programme. Like Cecil Rhodes, his hero among white men, he made a will distributing millions. Then he attached himself to his rich cousins, the Fujinami; and very soon he became indispensable to them. Fujinami Gentaro, an indolent man, gave him more and more authority over the family fortune. It was dirty business, this buying of girls and hiring of pimps, but it was immensely profitable; and more and more of the profits found their way into Ito's private account. Fujinami Gentaro did not seem to care. Takeshi, the son and heir, was a nonentity. Ito's intention was to continue to serve his cousins until he had amassed a working capital of a hundred thousand pounds. Then he would go into politics.

But the advent of Asako suggested a short cut to his hopes. If he married her he would gain immediate control of a large interest in the Fujinami estate. Besides she had all the qualifications for the wife of a Cabinet Minister, knowledge of foreign languages, ease in foreign society, experience of foreign dress and customs. Moreover, passion was stirring in his heart, the swift stormy passion of the Japanese male, which, when thwarted, drives him towards murder and suicide.

Like many Japanese, he had felt the attractiveness of foreign women when he was traveling abroad. Their independence stimulated him, their savagery and their masterful ways. Ito had found in Asako the physical beauty of his own race together with the character and energy which had pleased him so much in white women. Everything seemed to favor his suit. Asako clearly seemed to prefer his company to that of other members of the family. He had a hold over the Fujinami which would compel them to assent to anything he might require. True, he had a wife already; but she could easily be divorced.

Asako tolerated him, faute de mieux. Cousin Sadako was becoming tired of their system of mutual instruction, as she tired sooner or later of everything.

She had developed a romantic interest in one of the pet students, whom the Fujinami kept as an advertisement and a bodyguard. He was a pale youth with long greasy hair, spectacles and more gold in his teeth than he had ever placed in his waist-band. Popriety forbade any actual conversation with Sadako; but there was an interchange of letters almost every day, long subjective letters describing states of mind and high ideals, punctuated with shadowy Japanese poems and with quotations from the Bible, Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Bergson, Eucken, Oscar Wilde and Samuel Smiles.

Sadako told her cousin that the young man was a genius, and would one day be Professor of Literature at the Imperial University.



CHAPTER XXIII

THE REAL SHINTO

Yo no naka wo Nani ni tatoyemu? Asa-borake Kogi-yuku fune no Ato no shira-nami.

To what shall I compare This world? To the white wake behind A ship that has rowed away At dawn!

When the autumn came and the maple trees turned scarlet, the men returned from their long summer holidays. After that Asako's lot became heavier than ever.

"What is this talk of tall beds and special cooking?" said Mr. Fujinami Gentaro. "The girl is a Japanese. She must live like a Japanese and be proud of it."

So Asako had to sleep on the floor alongside her cousin Sadako in one of the downstairs rooms. Her last possession, her privacy, was taken away from her. The soft mattresses which formed the native bed, were not uncomfortable; but Asako discarded at once the wooden pillow, which every Japanese woman fits into the nape of her neck, so as to prevent her elaborate coiffure becoming disarranged. As a result, her head was always untidy, a fact upon which her relatives commented.

"She does not look like a great foreign lady now," said Mrs. Shidzuye, the mistress of the house. "She looks like osandon (a rough kitchen maid) from a country inn."

The other women tittered.

One day the old woman of Akabo arrived. Her hair was quite white like spun glass, and her waxen face was wrinkled like a relief map. Her body was bent double like a lobster; and her eyes were dim with cataracts. Cousin Sadako said with awe that she was over a hundred years old.

Asako had to submit to the indignity of allowing this dessicated hag to pass her fumbling hands all over her body, pinching her and prodding her. The old woman smelt horribly of daikon (pickled horse-radish). Furthermore the terrified girl had to answer a battery of questions as to her personal habits and her former marital relations. In return, she learned a number of curious facts about herself, of which she had hitherto no inkling. The lucky coincidence of having been born in the hour of the Bird and the day of the Bird set her apart from the rest of womankind as an exceptionally fortunate individual. But, unhappily, the malignant influence of the Dog Year was against her nativity. When once this disaffected animal had been conquered and cast out, Asako's future should be a very bright one. The family witch agreed with the Fujinami that the Dog had in all probability departed with the foreign husband. Then the toothless crone breathed three times upon the mouth, breasts and thighs of Asako; and when this operation was concluded, she stated her opinion that there was no reason, obstetrical or esoteric, why the ransomed daughter of the house of Fujinami should not become the mother of many children.

But on the psychical condition of the family in general she was far from reassuring. Everything about the mansion, the growth of the garden, the flight of the birds, the noises of the night-time, foreboded dire disaster in the near future. The Fujinami were in the grip of a most alarming inge (chain of cause and effect). Several "rough ghosts" were abroad; and were almost certain to do damage before their wrath could be appeased. What was the remedy? It was indeed difficult to prescribe for such complicated cases. Temple charms, however, were always efficacious. The old woman gave the names of some of the shrines which specialized in exorcism.

Some days later the charms were obtained, strips of rice paper with sacred writings and symbols upon them, and were pasted upon posts and lintels all over the house. This was done in Mr. Fujinami's absence. When he returned, he commented most unfavourably on this act of faith. The prayer tickets disfigured his house. They looked like luggage labels. They injured his reputation as an esprit fort. He ordered the students to remove them.

After this sacrilegious act, the old woman, who had lingered on in the family mansion for several weeks, returned again to Akabo, shaking her white locks and prophesying dark things to come.

* * * * *

For some reason or other, the witch's visit did not improve Asako's position. She was expected to perform little menial services, to bring in food at meal-times and to serve the gentlemen on bended knee, to clap her hands in summons to the servant girls, to massage Mrs. Fujinami, who suffered from rheumatism in the shoulder, and to scrub her back in the bath.

Her wishes were usually ignored; and she was not encouraged to leave the house and grounds. Sadako no longer took her cousin with her to the theatre or to choose kimono patterns at the Mitsukoshi store. She was irritated at Asako's failure to learn Japanese. It bored her to have to explain everything. She found this girl from Europe silly and undutiful.

Only at night they would chatter as girls will, even if they are enemies; and it was then that Sadako narrated the history of her romance with the young student.

One night, Asako awoke to find that the bed beside her was empty, and that the paper shoji was pushed aside. Nervous and anxious, she rose and stood in the dark veranda outside the room. A cold wind was blowing in from some aperture in the amado. This was unusual, for a Japanese house in its night attire is hermetically sealed.

Suddenly Sadako appeared from the direction of the wind. Her hair was disheveled. She wore a dark cloak over her parti-coloured night kimono. By the dim light of the andon (a rushlight in a square paper box), Asako could see that the cloak was spotted with rain.

"I have been to benjo," said Sadako nervously.

"You have been out in the rain," contradicted her cousin. "You are wet through. You will catch cold."

"Sa! Damare! (Be quiet!)" whispered Sadako, as she threw her cloak aside, "do not talk so loud. See!" She drew from her breast a short sword in a sheath of shagreen. "If you speak one word, I kill you with this."

"What have you done?" asked Asako, trembling.

"What I wished to do," was the sullen answer.

"You have been with Sekine?" Asako mentioned the student's name.

Sadako nodded in assent. Then she began to cry, hiding her face in her kimono sleeve.

"Do you love him?" Asako could not help asking.

"Of course, I love him," cried Sadako, starting up from her sorrow. "You see me. I am no more virgin. He is my life to me. Why cannot I love him? Why cannot I be free like men are free to love as they wish? I am new woman. I read Bernard Shaw. I find one law for men in Japan, and another law for women. But I will break that law. I have made Sekine my lover, because I am free."

Asako could never have imagined her proud, inhuman cousin reduced to this state of quivering emotion. Never before had she seen a Japanese soul laid bare.

"But you will marry Sekine, Sada dear; and then you will be happy."

"Marry Sekine!" the girl hissed, "marry a boy with no money and leave you to be the Fujinami heiress, when I am promised to the Governor of Osaka, who will be home Minister when the next Governor comes!"

"Oh, don't do that," urged Asako, her English sentimentalism flooding back across her mind. "Don't marry a man whom you don't love. You say you are a new woman. Marry Sekine. Marry the man whom you love. Then you will be happy."

"Japanese girls are never happy," groaned her cousin.

Asako gasped. This morality confused her.

"But that would be a mortal sin," she said. "Then you could never be happy."

"We cannot be happy. We are Fujinami," said Sadako gravely. "We are cursed. The old woman of Akabo said that it is a very bad curse. I do not believe superstition. But I believe there is a curse. You also, you have been unhappy, and your father and mother. We are cursed because of the women. We have made so much money from poor women. They are sold to men, and they suffer in pain and die so that we become rich. It is a very bad inge. So they say in Akabo, that we Fujinami have a fox in our family. It brings us money; but it makes us unhappy. In Akabo, even poor people will not marry with the Fujinami, because we have the fox."

It is a popular belief, still widely held in Japan, that certain families own spirit foxes, a kind of family banshee who render them service, but mark them with a curse.

"I do not understand," said Asako, afraid of this wild talk.

"Do you know why the Englishman went away?" said her cousin brutally.

It was Asako's turn to cry.

"Oh, I wish I had gone with him. He was so good to me, always so kind and so gentle!"

"When he married you," said Sadako, "he did not know that you had the curse. He ought not to have come to Japan with you. Now he knows you have the curse. So he went away. He was wise."

"What do you mean by the curse?" asked Asako.

"You do not know how the Fujinami have made so much money?"

"No," said Asako. "It used to come for me from Mr. Ito. He had shares or something."

"Yes. But a share that means a share of a business. Do you not know what is our business?"

"No," said Asako again.

"You have seen the Yoshiwara, where girls are sold to men. That is our business. Do you understand now?"

"No."

"Then I will tell you the whole story of the Fujinami. About one hundred and twenty years ago our great-great-grandfather came to Yedo, as Tokyo was then called. He was a poor boy from the country. He had no friends. He became clerk in a dry goods store. One day a woman, rather old, asked him: 'How much pay you get?' He said, 'No pay, only food and clothes.' The woman said, 'Come with me; I will give you food and clothes and pay also,' He went with her to the Yoshiwara where she had a small house with five or six girls. Every night he must stand in front of the house, calling. Then the drunken workmen, and the gamblers, and the bad samurai would come and pay their money. And they pay their money to him, our great-great-grandfather. When the girls were sick, or would not receive guests, he would beat them, and starve them, and burn o kyu (a medical plant called moxa, used for cauterization) on their backs. One day he said to the woman who was mistress of the house, 'Your girls are too old. The rich friends do not come any more. Let us sell these girls. I will go into the country and get new girls, and then you will marry me and make me your partner.' The woman said, 'If we have good luck with the girls and make money, then I marry you.' So our great-great-grandfather went back to his own country, to Akabo; and his old friends in the country were astonished, seeing how much money he had to spend. He said 'Yes. I have many rich friends in Yedo. They want pretty country girls to be their wives. See, I pay you in advance five pieces of gold. After the marriage more money will be given. Let me take your prettiest girls to Yedo with me. And they will all get rich husbands.' They were simple country people, and they believed him because he was a man of their village, of Akabo. He went back to Yedo with about twenty girls, fifteen or sixteen years old. He and the other clerks of the Yoshiwara first made them jorō. From those twenty girls he made very much money. So he married the woman who kept the house. Then he hired a big house called Tomonji. He furnished it very richly; and he would only receive guests of the high-class people. Five of his girls became very famous oiran. Even their pictures, drawn by Utamaro, are worth now hundreds of yen. When our great-great-grandfather died he was a very rich man. His son was the second Fujinami. He bought more houses in the Yoshiwara and more girls. He was our great-grandfather. He had two sons. One was your father's father, who bought this land and first built a house here. The other was my grandfather, Fujinami Gennosuke, who still lives in the inkyo. They have all made much money from girls; but the curse was hurting them all, especially their wives and daughters."

"And my father?" asked Asako.

"Your father wrote a book to say how bad a thing it is that money is made from men's lust and the pain of Women. He told in the book how girls are tricked to come to Tokyo, how their parents sell them because they are poor or because there is famine, how the girls are brought to Tokyo ten and twenty at a time, and are put to auction sale in the Yoshiwara, how they are shut up like prisoner, how very rough men are sent to them to break their spirit and to compel them to be jorō. There is a trial to see how strong they are. Then, when the spirit is broken, they are shown in the window as 'new girls' with beautiful kimono and with wreath of flowers on their head. If they are lucky they escape disease for a few years, but it comes soon or late—rinbyo, baidoku and raibyo. They are sent to the hospital for treatment; or else they are told to hide the disease and to get more men. So the men take the disease and bring it to their wives and children, who have done no wrong. But the girls of the Yoshiwara have to work all the time, when they are only half cured. So they become old and ugly and rotten very quickly. Then, if they take consumption or some such thing, they die and the master says, 'It is well. She was already too old. She was wasting our money.' And they are buried quickly in the burial place of the jorō outside the city boundary, the burial place of the dead who are forgotten. Or some, who are very strong, live until their contract is finished. Then they go back to the country, and marry there and spread disease. But they all die cursing the Fujinami, who have made money out of their sorrow and pain. I think this garden is full of their ghosts, and their curses beat upon the house, like the wind when it makes the shutters rattle!"

"How do you know all these terrible things?" asked Asako.

"It is written in your father's book. I will read it to you. If you do not believe, ask Ito San. He will tell you it is true."

So for several evenings Sadako read to this stranger Fujinami her own father's words, the words of a forerunner.

Japan is still a savage country, wrote Fujinami Katsundo, the Japanese are still barbarians. To compare the conventional codes, which they have mistaken for civilization, with the depth and the height of Occidental idealism, as Christ perceived it and Dante and St. Francis of Assisi and Tolstoy, is "to compare the tortoise with the moon." Japan is imitating from the West its worst propensities—hard materialism, vulgarity and money-worship. The Japanese must be humble, and must admit that the most difficult part of their lesson has yet to be learned. Cut and dried systems are useless. Prussian constitution, technical education, military efficiency and bravado—such things are not progress. Japan must denounce the slavery of ancestor-worship, and escape from the rule of the dead. She must chase away the bogeys of superstition, and enjoy life as a lovely thing, and love as the vision of a life still more beautiful. She must cleanse her land of all its filth, and make it what it still might be—the Country of the Rising Sun.

Such was the message of Asako's father in his book, The Real Shinto.

"We are not allowed to read this book," Sadako explained; "the police have forbidden it. But I found a secret copy. It was undutiful of your father to write such things. He went away from Japan; and everyone said, 'It is a good thing he has gone; he was a bad man; he shamed his country and his family.'"

There was much in the book which Asako could not follow. Her cousin tried to explain it to her; and many nights passed, thus, the two girls sitting up and reading by the pale light of the andon. It was like a renewal of the old friendship. Sometimes a low whistle sounded from outside the house. Sadako would lay aside the book, would slip on her cloak and go out into the garden, where Sekine was waiting for her.

When she was left to herself Asako began to think for the first time in her life. Hitherto her thoughts had been concerned merely with her own pleasures and pains, with the smiles and frowns of those around her, with petty events and trifling projects. Perhaps, because some of her father's blood was alive in her veins, she could understand certain aspects of his book more clearly than her interpreter, Sadako. She knew now why Geoffrey would not touch her money. It was filthy, it was diseased, like the poor women who had earned it. Of course, her Geoffrey preferred poverty to wealth like that. Could she face poverty with him? Why, she was poor already, here in her cousins' house. Where was the luxury which her money used to buy? She was living the life of a servant and a prisoner.

What would be the end of it? Surely Geoffrey would come back to her, and take her away! But he had no money now, and it would cost much money to travel to Japan. And then, this terrible war! Geoffrey was a soldier. He would be sure to be there, leading his men. Supposing he were killed?

One night in a dream she saw his body carried past her, limp and bleeding. She screamed in her sleep. Sadako awoke, terrified.

"What is the matter?"

"I dreamed of Geoffrey, my husband. Perhaps he is killed in the war."

"Do not say that," said Sadako. "It is unlucky to speak of death. It troubles the ghosts. I have told you this house is haunted."

Certainly for Asako the Fujinami mansion had lost its charm. Even the beautiful landscape was besieged by horrible thoughts. Every day two or three of the Yoshiwara women died of disease and neglect, so Sadako said and therefore every day the invisible population of the Fujinami garden must be increasing, and the volume of their curses must be gathering in intensity. The ghosts hissed like snakes in the bamboo grove. They sighed in the pine branches. They nourished the dwarf shrubs with their pollution. Beneath the waters of the lake the corpses—women's corpses—were laid out in rows. Their thin hands shook the reeds. Their pale faces rose at night to the surface, and stared at the moon. The autumn maples smeared the scene with infected blood; and the stone foxes in front of the shrine of Inari sneered and grinned at the devil world which their foul influence had called into being through the black witchcraft of lechery, avarice and disease.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE AUTUMN FESTIVAL

Yo no naka ni Ushi no Kuruma no Nakari-seba, Omoi no iye wo Ikade ide-mashi?

In this world If there were no Ox-cart (i.e. Buddhist religion), How should we escape From the (burning) mansion of our thought?

During October, the whole family of the Fujinami removed from Tokyo for a few days in order to perform their religious duties at the temple of Ikegami. Even grandfather Gennosuke emerged from his dower-house, bringing his wife, O Tsugi. Mr. Fujinami Gentaro was in charge of his own wife, Shidzuye San, of Sadako and of Asako. Only Fujinami Takeshi, the son and heir, with his wife Matsuko, was absent.

There had been some further trouble in the family which had not been confided to Asako, but which necessitated urgent steps for the propitiation of religious influences. The Fujinami were followers of the Nichiren sect of Buddhism. Their conspicuous devotion and their large gifts to the priests of the temple were held to be causes of their ever-increasing prosperity. The dead Fujinami, down from that great-great-grandfather who had first come to seek his fortune in Yedo, were buried at Ikegami. Here the priests gave to each hotoke (Buddha or dead person) his new name, which was inscribed on small black tablets, the ihai. One of these tablets for each dead person was kept in the household shrine at Tokyo, and one in the temple at Ikegami.

Asako was taken to the October festival, because her father too was buried in the temple grounds—one small bone of him, that is to say, an ikotsu or legacy bone, posted home from Paris before the rest of his mortality found alien sepulture at Pere Lachaise. Masses were said for the dead; and Asako was introduced to the tablet. But she did not feel the same emotion as when she first visited the Fujinami house. Now, she had heard her father's authentic voice. She knew his scorn for pretentiousness of all kinds, for false conventions, for false emotions, his hatred of priestcraft, his condemnation of the family wealth, and his contempt for the little respectabilities of Japanese life.

* * * * *

A temple in Japan is not merely a building; it is a site. These sites were most carefully chosen with the same genius which guided our Benedictines and Carthusians. The site of Ikegami is a long-abrupt hill, half-way between Tokyo and Yokohama. It is clothed with cryptomeria trees. These dark conifers, like immense cypresses, give to the spot that grave, silent, irrevocable atmosphere, with which Boecklin has invested his picture of the Island of the Dead. These majestic trees are essentially a part of the temple. They correspond to the pillars of our Gothic cathedrals. The roof is the blue vault of heaven; and the actual buildings are but altars, chantries and monuments.

A steep flight of steps is suspended like a cascade from the crest of the hill. Up and down these steps, the wooden clogs of the Japanese people patter incessantly like water-drops. At the top of the steps stands the towered gateway, painted with red ochre, which leads to the precincts. The guardians of the gate, Ni-O, the two gigantic Deva kings, who have passed from India into Japanese mythology, are encaged in the gateway building. Their cage and their persons are littered with nasty morsels of chewed paper, wherever their worshippers have literally spat their prayers at them.

Within the enclosure are the various temple buildings, the bell-tower, the library, the washing-trough, the hall of votive offerings, the sacred bath-house, the stone lanterns and the lodgings for the pilgrims; also the two main halls for the temple services, which are raised on low piles and are linked together by a covered bridge, so that they look like twin arks of safety, floating just five feet above the troubles of this life. These buildings are most of them painted red; and there is fine carving on panels, friezes and pediments, and also much tawdry gaudiness. Behind these two sanctuaries is the mortuary chapel where repose the memories of many of the greatest in the land. Behind this again are the priests' dormitories, with a lovely hidden garden hanging on the slopes of a sudden ravine; its presiding genius is an old pine-tree, beneath which Nichiren himself, a contemporary and a counterpart of Saint Dominic, used to meditate on his project for a Universal Church, founded on the life of Buddha, and led by the apostolate of Japan.

* * * * *

For the inside of a week the Fujinami dwelt in one of a row of stalls, like loose-boxes, within the temple precincts. The festival might have some affinity with the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, when the devout left their city dwellings to live in booths outside the walls.

Namu myōhō renge kyō.

(Adoration to the Wonderful Law of the Lotus Scriptures!)

The famous formula of the priests of the Nichiren sect was being repeated over and over again to the accompaniment of drums; for in the sacred text itself lies the only authentic Way of Salvation. With exemplary insistence Mr. Fujinami Gennosuke was beating out the rhythm of the prayer with a wooden clapper on the mokugyō, a wooden drum, shaped like a fish's head.

Namu myōhō renge kyō.

From every corner of the temple enclave the invocation was droning like a threshing machine. Asako's Catholic conscience, now awakening from the spell which Japan had cast upon it, became uneasy about its share in these pagan rites. In order to drive the echo of the litany out of her ears, she tried to concentrate her attention upon watching the crowd.

Namu myōhō renge kyō.

Around her was a dense multitude of pilgrims, in their hundreds of thousands, shuffling, chaffering and staring. Some, like the Fujinami, had hired temporary lodgings, and had cooks and servants in attendance. Some were camping in the open. Others were merely visiting the temple for the inside of the day. The crowds kept on shifting and mingling like ants on an ant-hill.

Enjoyment, rather than piety, was the prevailing spirit; for this was one of the few annual holidays of the industrious Tokyo artisan.

In the central buildings, five feet above this noisy confluence of people, where the golden images of the Buddhas are enthroned, the mitred priests with their copes of gold-embroidered brown were performing the rituals of their order. To right and left of the high altar, the canons squatting at their red-lacquered praying-desks, were reciting the sutras in strophe and antistrophe. Clouds of incense rose.

In the adjoining building an earnest young preacher was exhorting a congregation of elderly and somnolent ladies to eschew the lusts of the flesh and to renounce the world and its gauds, marking each point in his discourse with raps of his fan. Foxy-faced satellites of the abbey were doing a roaring trade in charms against various accidents, and in sacred scrolls printed with prayers or figures of Nichiren.

The temple-yard was an immense fancy fair. The temple pigeons wheeled disconsolately in the air or perched upon the roofs, unable to find one square foot of the familiar flagstones, where they were used to strut and peck. Stalls lined the stone pathways and choked the spaces between the buildings. Merchants were peddling objects of piety, sacred images, charms and rosaries; and there were flowers for the women's hair, and toys for the children, and cakes and biscuits, biiru (beer) and ramune (lemonade) and a distressing sickly drink called "champagne cider" and all manner of vanities. In one corner of the square a theatre was in full swing, the actors making up in public on a balcony above the crowd, so as to whet their curiosity and attract their custom. Beyond was a cinematograph, advertised by lurid paintings of murders and apparitions; and farther on there was a circus with a mangy zoo.

The crowd was astonishingly mixed. There were prosperous merchants of Tokyo with their wives, children, servants and apprentices. There were students with their blue and white spotted cloaks, their kepis with the school badge, and their ungainly stride. There were modern young men in yōfuku (European dress), with panama hats, swagger canes and side-spring shoes, supercilious in attitude and proud of their unbelief. There were troops of variegated children, dragging at their elders' hands or kimonos, or getting lost among the legs of the multitude like little leaves in an eddy. There were excursion parties from the country, with their kimonos caught up to the knees, and with baked earthen faces stupidly staring, sporting each a red flower or a coloured towel for identification purposes. There were labourers in tight trousers and tabard jackets, inscribed with the name and profession of their employer. There were geisha girls on their best behaviour, in charge of a professional auntie, and recognizable only by the smart cut of their cloaks and the deep space between the collar and the nape of the neck, where the black chignon lay.

Close to the tomb of Nichiren stood a Japanese Salvationist, a zealous pimply young man, wearing the red and blue uniform of General Booth with kaiseigun (World-saving Army) in Japanese letters round his staff cap. He stood in front of a screen, on which the first verse of "Onward, Christian Soldiers," was written in a Japanese translation. An assistant officiated at a wheezy harmonium. The tune was vaguely akin to its Western prototype; and the two evangelists were trying to induce a tolerant but uninterested crowd to join in the chorus.

Everywhere beggars were crawling over the compound in various states of filth. Some, however, were so ghastly that they were excluded from the temple enclosure. They had lined up among the trunks of the cryptomeria trees, among the little grey tombs with their fading inscriptions and the moss-covered statues of kindly Buddhas.

Asako gave a penny into the crooked hand of one poor sightless wretch.

"Oh, no!" cried cousin Sadako; "do not go near to them. Do not touch them. They are lepers."

Some of them had no arms, or had mere stumps ending abruptly in a red and sickening object like a bone which a dog has been chewing. Some had no legs, and were pulled along on little wheeled trolleys by their less dilapidated companions in misfortune. Some had no features. Their faces were mere glabrous disks, from which eyes and nose had completely vanished; only the mouth remained, a toothless gap fringed with straggling hairs. Some had faces abnormally bloated, with powerful foreheads and heavy jowls, which gave them an expression of stony immobility like Byzantine lions. All were fearfully dirty and covered with sores and lice.

The people passing by smiled at their grim unsightliness, and threw pennies to them, for which they scrambled and scratched like beasts.

Namu myōhō renge kyō.

Asako's relatives spent the day in eating, drinking and gossiping to the rhythm of the interminable prayer.

It was a perfect day of autumn, which is the sweetest season in Japan. A warm bright sun had been shining on the sumptuous colours of the waning year, on the brilliant reds and yellows which clothed the neighbouring hills, on the broad brown plain with its tesselated design of bare rice-fields, on the brown villas and cottages huddled in their fences of evergreen like birds in their nests, on the red trunks of the cryptomeria trees, on the brown carpet of matted pine-needles, on the grey crumbling stones of the old graveyard, on the high-pitched temple roofs, and on the inconsequential swarms of humanity drifting to their devotions, casting their pennies into the great alms-trough in front of the shrine, clanging the brass bell with a prayer for good luck, and drifting home again with their bewildered, happy children.

Asako no longer felt like a Japanese. The sight of her countrymen in their drab monotonous thousands sickened her. The hiss and cackle of their incomprehensible tongue beat upon her brain with a deadly incessant sound, like raindrops to one who is impatiently awaiting the return of fine weather.

Here at Ikegami, the distant view of the sea and the Yokohama shipping invited Asako to escape. But where could she escape to? To England. She was an Englishwoman no longer. She had cast her husband off for insufficient reasons. She had been cold, loveless, narrow-minded and silly. She had acted, as she now recognised, largely on the suggestion of others. Like a fool she had believed what had been told. She had not trusted her love for her husband. As usual, her thoughts returned to Geoffrey, and to the constant danger which threatened him. Lately, she had started to write a letter to him several times, but had never got further than "Dearest Geoffrey."

She was glad when the irritating day was over, when the rosy sunset clouds showed through the trunks of the cryptomerias, when the night fell and the great stars like lamps hung in the branches. But the night brought no silence. Paper lanterns were lighted round the temple; and rough acetylene flares lit up the tawdry fairings. The chattering, the bargaining, the clatter of the geta became more terrifying even than in daytime. It was like being in the darkness in a cage of wild beasts, heard, felt, but unseen.

The evening breeze was cold. In spite of the big wooden fireboxes strewn over their stall, the Fujinami were shivering.

"Let us go for a walk," suggested cousin Sadako.

The two girls strolled along the ridge of the hill as far as the five-storied pagoda. They passed the tea-house, so famous for its plum-blossoms in early March. It was brightly lighted. The paper rectangles of the shoji were aglow like an illuminated honeycomb. The wooden walls resounded with the jangle of the samisen, the high screaming geisha voices, and the rough laughter of the guests. From one room the shoji were pushed open; and drunken men could be seen with kimonos thrown back from their shoulders showing a body reddened with sake. They had taken the geishas' instruments from them, and were performing an impromptu song and dance, while the girls clapped their hands and writhed with laughter. Beyond the tea-house, the din of the festival was hushed. Only from the distance came the echo of the song, the rasp of the forced merriment, the clatter of the geta, and the hum of the crowd.

Starlight revealed the landscape. The moon was rising through a cloud's liquescence. Soon the hundreds of rice-plots would catch her full reflection. The outline of the coast of Tokyo Bay was visible as far as Yokohama; so were the broad pool of Ikegami and the lumpy masses of the hills inland.

The landscape was alive with lights, lights dim, lights bright, lights stationary, lights in swaying movement round each centre of population. It looked as if the stars had fallen from heaven, and were being shifted and sorted by careful gleaners. As each nebula of white illumination assembled itself, it began to move across the vast plain, drawn inwards towards Ikegami from every point of the compass as though by a magnetic force. These were the lantern processions of pilgrims. They looked like the souls of the righteous rising from earth to heaven in a canto from Dante.

The clusters of lights started, moved onwards, paused, re-grouped themselves, and struggled forward, until in the narrow street of the village under the hill Asako could distinguish the shapes of the lantern-bearers and their strange antics, and the sacred palanquin, a kind of enormous wooden bee-hive, which was the centre of each procession, borne on the sturdy shoulders of a swarm of young men to the beat of drums and the inevitable chant.

Namu myōhō renge kyō.

Slowly the procession jolted up the steep stairway, and came to rest with their heavy burdens in front of the temple of Nichiren.

"It is very silly," said cousin Sadako, "to be so superstitious, I think."

"Then why are we here?" asked Asako.

"My grandfather is very superstitious; and my father is afraid to say 'No' to him. My father does not believe in any gods or Buddhas; but he says it does no harm, and it may do good. All our family is gohei-katsugi (brandishers of sacred symbols). We think that with all this prayer we can turn away the trouble of Takeshi."

"Why, what is the matter with Mr. Takeshi? Why is he not here? and Matsuko San and the children?"

"It is a great secret," said the Fujinami cousin, "you will tell no one. You will pretend also even with me that you do not know. Takeshi San is very sick. The doctor says that he is a leper."

Asako stared, uncomprehending. Sadako went on,—

"You saw this morning those ugly beggars. They were all so terrible to see, and their bodies were so rotten. My brother is becoming like that. It is a sickness. It cannot be cured. It will kill him very slowly. Perhaps his wife Matsu and his children also have the sickness. Perhaps we too are sick. No one can tell, not for many years."

Ugly wings seemed to cover the night. The world beneath the hill had become the Pit of Hell, and the points of light were devils' spears. Asako trembled.

"What does it mean?" she asked. "How did Takeshi San become sick?"

"It was a tenbatsu (judgment of heaven)," answered her cousin. "Takeshi San was a bad man. He was rude to his father, and he was cruel to his wife. He thought only of geisha and bad women. No doubt, he became sick from touching a woman who was sick. Besides, it is the bad inge of the Fujinami family. Did not the old woman of Akabo say so? It is the curse of the Yoshiwara women. It will be our turn next, yours and mine."

No wonder that poor Asako could not sleep that night in the cramped promiscuity of the family dead.

Fujinami Takeshi had been sickly for some time; but then his course of life could hardly be called a healthy one. On his return from his summer holiday, red patches had appeared on the palms of his hands, and afterwards on his forehead. He had complained of the irritation caused by this "rash." Professor Kashio had been called in to prescribe. A blood test was taken. The doctor then pronounced that the son and heir was suffering from leprosy, and for that there was no cure.

The disease is accompanied by irritation, but by little actual pain. Constant application of compresses can allay the itching, and can often save the patient from the more ghastly ravages of disfigurement. But, slowly, the limbs lose their force, the fingers and toes drop away, the hair falls, and merciful blindness comes to hide from the sufferer the living corpse to which his spirit is bound. More merciful yet, the slow decay attacks the organs of the body. Often consumption intervenes. Often just a simple cold suffices to snuff out the flickering life.

In the village of Kusatsu, beyond the Karuizawa mountains, there is a natural hot spring, whose waters are beneficial for the alleviation of the disease. In this place there is a settlement of well-to-do lepers. Thither it was decided to banish poor Takeshi. His wife, Matsuko, naturally was expected to accompany him, to nurse him and to make life as comfortable for him as she could. Her eventual doom was almost certain. But there was no question, no choice, no hesitation and no praise. Every Japanese wife is obliged to become an Alcestis, if her husband's well-being demand it. The children were sent to the ancestral village of Akabo.



CHAPTER XXV

JAPANESE COURTSHIP

O-bune no Hatsuru-tomari no Tayutai ni Mono-omoi-yase-nu Hito no ko yuye ni.

With a rocking (As) of great ships Riding at anchor I have at last become worn out with love, Because of a child of a man.

When the Fujinami returned to Tokyo, the wing of the house in which the unfortunate son had lived, had been demolished. An ugly scar remained, a slab of charred concrete strewn with ashes and burned beams. Saddest sight of all was the twisted iron work of Takeshi's foreign bedstead, once the symbol of progress and of the haikara spirit. The fire was supposed to have been accidental; but the ravages had been carefully limited to the offending wing.

Mr. Fujinami Gentaro, disgusted at this unsightly wreckage wished to rebuild at once. But the old grandfather had objected that this spot of misfortune was situated in the northeast corner of the mansion, a quarter notoriously exposed to the attacks of oni (evil spirits). He was in favor of total demolishment.

This was only one of the differences of opinion between the two seniors of the house of Fujinami, which became more frequent as the clouds of disaster gathered over the home in Akasaka. A far more thorny problem was the question of the succession.

With the living death of Takeshi, there was no male heir. Several family councils were held in the presence of the two Mr. Fujinami generally in the lower-house, at which six or seven members of the collateral branches were also present. Grandfather Gennosuke, who despised Takeshi as a waster, would not listen to any plea on behalf of his children.

"To a bad father a bad child," he enunciated, his restless jaw masticating more ferociously than ever.

He was strongly of opinion that it was the curse of Asako's father which had brought this sorrow upon his family. Katsundo and Asako were representatives of the elder branch. Himself, Gentaro and Takeshi were mere usurpers. Restore the elder branch to its rights, and the indignant ghost would cease to plague them all.

Such was the argument of grandfather Gennosuke.

Fujinami Gentaro naturally supported the claims of his own progeny. If Takeshi's children must be disinherited because of the leprous strain, then, at least, Sadako remained. She was a well-educated and serious girl. She knew foreign languages. She could make a brilliant marriage. Her husband would be adopted as heir. Perhaps the Governor of Osaka?

The other members of the council shook their heads, and breathed deeply. Were there no Fujinami left of the collateral branches? Why adopt a tanin (outside person)? So spoke the M.P., the man with a wen, who had an axe of his own to grind.

It was decided to choose the son-in-law candidate first of all; and, afterwards, to decide which of the girls he was to marry. Perhaps it would be as well to consult the fortune tellers. At any rate, a list of suitable applicants would be prepared for the next meeting.

"When men speak of the future," said grandfather Gennosuke, "the rats in the ceiling laugh."

So the conference broke up.

Mr. Fujinami Gentaro had no sooner returned to the academic calm of his chaste reading room, than Mr. Ito appeared on the threshold.

The oily face was more moist than usual, the buffalo-horn moustache more truculent; and though the autumn day was cool, Ito was agitating a fan. He was evidently nervous. Before approaching the sanctum, he had blown his nose into a small square piece of soft paper, which is the Japanese apology for a handkerchief. He had looked around for some place where to cast the offence; but finding none along the trim garden border, he had slipped it into his wide kimono sleeve.

Mr. Fujinami frowned. He was tired of business matters, and the worry of other people's affairs. He longed for peace.

"Indeed, the weather becomes perceptibly cooler," said Mr. Ito, with a low prostration.

"If there is business," his patron replied crisply, "please step up into the room."

Mr. Ito slipped off his geta, and ascended from the garden path. When he had settled himself in the correct attitude with legs crossed and folded, Mr. Fujinami pushed over towards him a packet of cigarettes, adding;

"Please, without embarrassment, speak quickly what you have to say."

Mr. Ito chose a cigarette, and slowly pinched together the cardboard holder, which formed its lower half.

"Indeed, sensei, it is a difficult matter," he began. "It is a matter which should be handled by an intermediary. If I speak face to face like a foreigner the master will excuse my rudeness."

"Please, speak clearly."

"I owe my advancement in life entirely to the master. I was the son of poor parents. I was an emigrant and a vagabond over three thousand worlds. The master gave me a home and lucrative employment. I have served the master for many years; with my poor effort the fortunes of the family have perhaps increased. I have become as it were a son to the Fujinami."

He paused at the word "son." His employer had caught his meaning, and was frowning more than ever. At last he answered:

"To expect too much is a dangerous thing. To choose a yoshi (adopted son) is a difficult question. I myself cannot decide such grave matters. There must be consultation with the rest of the Fujinami family. You yourself have suggested that Governor Sugiwara might perhaps be a suitable person."

"At that time the talk was of Sada San; this time the talk is of Asa San."

A flash of inspiration struck Mr. Fujinami Gentaro, and a gush of relief. By giving her to Ito, he might be able to side-track Asako, and leave the highway to inheritance free for his own daughter. But Ito had grown too powerful to be altogether trusted.

"It must be clearly understood," said the master, "that it is the husband of our Sada who will be the Fujinami yoshi."

Ito bowed.

"Thanks to the master," he said, "there is money in plenty. There is no desire to speak of such matters. The request is for Asa San only. Truly, the heart is speaking. That girl is a beautiful child, and altogether a haikara person. My wife is old and barren and of low class. I wish to have a wife who is worthy of my position in the house of Fujinami San."

The head of the family cackled with sudden laughter; he was much relieved.

"Ha! Ha! Ito Kun! So it is love, is it? You are in love like a school student. Well, indeed, love is a good thing. What you have said shall be well considered."

So the lawyer was dismissed.

Accordingly, at the next family council Mr. Fujinami put forward the proposal that Asako should be married forthwith to the family factotum, who should be given a lump sum down in consideration for a surrender of all further claim in his own name or his wife's to any share in the family capital.

"Ito Kun," he concluded, "is the brain of our business. He is the family karo (prime minister). I think it would be well to give this Asa to him."

To his surprise, the proposal met with unanimous opposition. The rest of the family envied and disliked Ito, who was regarded as Mr. Fujinami's pampered favourite.

Grandfather Gennosuke was especially indignant.

"What?" he exploded in one of those fits of rage common to old men in Japan; "give the daughter of the elder branch to a butler, to a man whose father ran between rickshaw shafts. If the spirit of Katsundo has not heard this foolish talk it would be a good thing for us. Already there is a bad inge. By doing such a thing it will become worse and worse, until the whole house of Fujinami is ruined. This Ito is a rascal, a thief, a good-for-nothing, a——"

The old gentleman collapsed.

Again the council separated, still undecided except for one thing that the claim of Mr. Ito to the hand of Asako was quite inadmissible.

When the "family prime minister" next pressed his master on the subject, Mr. Fujinami had to confess that the proposal had been rejected.

Then Ito unmasked his batteries, and his patron had to realize that the servant was a servant no longer.

Ito said that it was necessary for him to have Asa San and that before the end of the year. He was in love with this girl. Passion was an overwhelming thing.

"Two things have ever been the same Since the Age of the Gods— The flowing of water, And the way of Love."

This old Japanese poem he quoted as his excuse for what would otherwise be an inexcusable impertinence. The master was aware that politics in Japan were in an unsettled state, and that the new Cabinet was scarcely established; that a storm would overthrow it, and that the Opposition were already looking about for a suitable scandal to use for their revenge. He, Ito, held the evidence which they desired—the full story of the Tobita concession, with the names and details of the enormous bribes distributed by the Fujinami. If these things were published, the Government would certainly fall; also the Tobita concession would be lost and the whole of that great outlay; also the Fujinami's leading political friends would be discredited and ruined. There would be a big trial, and exposure, and outcry, and judgment, and prison. The master must excuse his servant for speaking so rudely to his benefactor. But in love there are no scruples; and he must have Asa San. After all, after his long service, was his request so unreasonable?

Mr. Fujinami Gentaro, thoroughly scared, protested that he himself was in favour of the match. He begged for time so as to be able to convert the other members of the family council.

"Perhaps," suggested Ito, "if Asa San were sent away from Akasaka, perhaps if she were living alone, it would be more easy to manage. What is absent is soon forgotten. Mr. Fujinami Gennosuke is a very old gentleman; he would soon forget. Sada San could then take her proper position as the only daughter of the Fujinami. Was there not a small house by the river side at Mukojima, which had been rented for Asa San? Perhaps she would like to live there—quite alone."

"Perhaps Ito Kun would visit her from time to time," said Mr. Fujinami, pleased with the idea; "she will be so lonely; there is no knowing."

The one person who was never consulted, and who had not the remotest notion of what was going on, was Asako herself.

* * * * *

Asako was most unhappy. The disappearance of Fujinami Takeshi exasperated the competition between herself and her cousin. Just as formerly all Sadako's intelligence and charm had been exerted to attract her English relative to the house in Akasaka, so now she applied all her force to drive her cousin out of the family circle. For many weeks now Asako had been ignored; but after the return from Ikegami a positive persecution commenced. Although the nights were growing chilly, she was given no extra bedding. Her meals were no longer served to her; she had to get what she could from the kitchen. The servants, imitating their mistress's attitude were deliberately disobliging and rude to the little foreigner.

Sadako and her mother would sneer at her awkwardness and at her ignorance of Japanese customs. Her obi was tied anyhow; for she had no maid. Her hair was untidy; for she was not allowed a hairdresser.

They nicknamed her rashamen (goat face), using an ugly slang word for a foreigner's Japanese mistress; and they would pretend that she smelt like a European.

"Kusai! Kusai! (Stink! Stink!)" they would say.

The war even was used to bait Asako. Every German success was greeted with acclamation. The exploits of the Emden were loudly praised; and the tragedy of Coronel was gloated over with satisfaction.

"The Germans will win because they are brave," said Sadako.

"The English lose too many prisoners; Japanese soldiers are never taken prisoner."

"When the Japanese general ordered the attack on Tsingtao, the English regiment ran away!"

Cousin Sadako announced her intention of studying German.

"Nobody will speak English now," she said. "The English are disgraced. They cannot fight."

"I wish Japan would make war on the English," Asako answered bitterly, "you would get such a beating that you would never boast again. Look at my husband," she added proudly; "he is so big and strong and brave. He could pick up two or three Japanese generals like toys and knock their heads together."

Even Mr. Fujinami Gentaro joined once or twice in these debates, and announced sententiously:

"Twenty years ago Japan defeated China and took Korea. Ten years ago we defeated Russia and took Manchuria. This year we defeat Germany and take Tsingtao. In ten years we shall defeat America and take Hawaii and the Philippines. In twenty years we shall defeat England and take India and Australia. Then we Japanese shall be the most powerful nation in the world. This is our divine mission."

It was characteristic of the loyalty of Asako's nature, that, although very ignorant of the war, of its causes and its vicissitudes, yet she remained fiercely true to England and the Allies, and could never accept the Japanese detachment. Above all, the thought of her husband's danger haunted her. Waking and sleeping she could see him, sword in hand, leading his men to desperate hand-to-hand struggles, like those portrayed in the crude Japanese chromographs, which Sadako showed her to play upon her fears. Poor Asako! How she hated Japan now! How she loathed the cramped, draughty, uncomfortable life! How she feared the smiling faces and the watchful eyes, from which it seemed she never could escape!

Christmas was at hand, the season of pretty presents and good things to eat. Her last Christmas she had spent with Geoffrey on the Riviera. Lady Everington had been there. They had watched the pigeon shooting in the warm sunlight. They had gone to the opera in the evening—Madame Butterfly! Asako had imagined herself in the role of the heroine, so gentle, so faithful, waiting and waiting in her little wooden house for the big white husband—who never came. What was that? She heard the guns of his ship saluting the harbour. He was coming back to her at last—but not alone! A woman was with him, a white woman!

Alone, in her bare room—her only companion a flaky yellow chrysanthemum nodding in the draught—Asako sobbed and sobbed as though her heart were breaking. Somebody tapped at the sliding shutter. Asako could not answer. The shoji was pushed open, and Tanaka entered.

Asako was glad to see him. Alone of the household Tanaka was still deferential in his attitude towards his late mistress. He was always ready to talk about the old times which gave her a bitter pleasure.

"If Ladyship is so sad," he began, as he had been coached in his part beforehand by the Fujinami, "why Ladyship stay in this house? Change house, change trouble, we say."

"But where can I go?" Asako asked helplessly.

"Ladyship has pretty house by river brink," suggested Tanaka. "Ladyship can stay two month, three month. Then the springtime come and Ladyship feel quite happy again. Even I, in the winter season, I find the mind very distress. It is often so."

To be alone, to be free from the daily insults and cruelty; this in itself would be happiness to Asako.

"But will Mr. Fujinami allow me to go?" she asked, timorously.

"Ladyship must be brave," said the counselor. "Ladyship is not prisoner. Ladyship must say, I go. But perhaps I can arrange matter for Ladyship."

"Oh, Tanaka, please, please do. I'm so unhappy here."

"I will hire cook and maid for Ladyship. I myself will be seneschal!"

Mr. Fujinami Gentaro and his family were delighted to hear that their plan was working so smoothly, and that they could so easily get rid of their embarrassing cousin. The "seneschal" was instructed at once to see about arrangements for the house, which had not been lived in since its new tenancy.

Next evening, when Asako had spread the two quilts on the golden matting, when she had lit the rushlight in the square andon, when the two girls were lying side by side under the heavy wadded bedclothes, Sadako said to her cousin:

"Asa Chan, I do not think you like me now as much as you used to like me."

"I always like people when I have once liked them," said Asako; "but everything is different now."

"I see, your heart changes quickly," said her cousin bitterly.

"No, I have tried to change, but I cannot change. I have tried to become Japanese, but I cannot even learn the Japanese language. I do not like the Japanese way of living. In France and in England I was always happy. I don't think I shall ever be happy again."

"You ought to be more grateful," said Sadako severely. "We have saved you from your husband, who was cruel and deceitful—"

"No, I don't believe that now. My husband and I loved each other always. You people came between us with wicked lies and separated us."

"Anyhow, you have made the choice. You have chosen to be Japanese. You can never be English again."

The Fujinami had hypnotized Asako with this phrase, as a hen can be hypnotized with a chalk line. Day after day it was dinned into her ears, cutting off all hope of escape from the country or of appeal to her English friends.

"You had better marry a Japanese," said Sadako, "or you will become old maid. Why not marry Ito San? He says he likes you. He is a clever man. He has plenty of money. He is used to foreign ways."

"Marry Mr. Ito!" Asako exclaimed, aghast; "but he has a wife already."

"They will divorce. It is no trouble. There are not even children."

"I would rather die than marry any Japanese," said Asako with conviction.

Sadako Fujinami turned her back and pretended to sleep; but long through the dark cold night Asako could feel her turning restlessly to and fro.

Some time about midnight Asako heard her name called:

"Asa Chan, are you awake?"

"Yes; is anything the matter?"

"Asa Chan, in your house by the river you will be lonely. You will not be afraid?"

"I am not afraid to be lonely," Asako answered; "I am afraid of people."

"Look!" said her cousin; "I give you this."

She drew from the bosom of her kimono the short sword in its sheath of shagreen, which Asako had seen once or twice before.

"It is very old," she continued; "it belonged to my mother's people. They were samurai of the Sendai clan. In old Japan every noble girl carried such a short sword; for she said, 'Better death than dishonour.' When the time came to die she would strike—here, in the throat, not too hard, but pushing strongly. But first she would tie her feet together with the obidome, the silk string which you have to hold your obi straight. That was in case the legs open too much; she must not die in immodest attitude. So when General Nogi did harakiri at Emperor Meiji's funeral, his wife, Countess Nogi, killed herself also with such a sword. I give you my sword because in the house by the river you will be lonely—and things might happen. I can never use the sword myself now. It was the sword of my ancestors. I am not pure now. I cannot use the sword. If I kill myself I throw myself into the river like a common geisha. I think it is best you marry Ito. In Japan it is bad to have a husband; but to have no husband, it is worse."



CHAPTER XXVI

ALONE IN TOKYO

Kuraki yori Kuraki michi ni zo Iri-nu-beki: Haruka ni terase Yuma no ha no tsuki!

Out of the dark Into a dark path I now must enter: Shine (on me) from afar, Moon of the mountain fringe!

Some days before Christmas Asako had moved into her own little home.

To be free, to have escaped from the watchful eyes and the whispering tongues to be at liberty to walk about the streets and to visit the shops, as an independent lady of Japan—these were such unfamiliar joys to her that for a time she forgot how unhappy she really was, and how she longed for Geoffrey's company as of old. Only in the evenings a sense of insecurity rose with the river mists, and a memory of Sadako's warning shivered through the lonely room with the bitter cold of the winter air. It was then that Asako felt for the little dagger resting hidden in her bosom just as Sadako had shown her how to wear it. It was then that she did not like to be alone, and that she summoned Tanaka to keep her company and to while away the time with his quaint loquacity.

Considering that he had been largely instrumental in breaking up her happy life, considering that every day he stole from her and lied to her, it was wonderful that his mistress was still so attached to him, that, in fact, she regarded him as her only friend. He was like a bad habit or an old disease, which we almost come to cherish since we cannot be delivered from it.

But, when Tanaka protested his devotion, did he mean what he said? There is a bedrock of loyalty in the Japanese nature. Half-way down the road to shame, it will halt of a sudden, and bungle back its way to honour. Then there is the love of the beau geste which is an even stronger motive very often than the love of right-doing for its own sake. The favorite character of the Japanese drama is the otokodate, the chivalrous champion of the common people who rescues beauty in distress from the lawless, bullying, two-sworded men. It tickled Tanaka's remarkable vanity to regard himself as the protector of this lonely and unfortunate lady. It might be said of him as of Lancelot, that—

"His honour rooted in dishonour stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true."

Asako was glad on the whole that she had no visitors. The Fujinami were busy with their New Year preparations. Christmas Day passed by, unheeded by the Japanese, though the personality and appearance of Santa Claus are not unknown to them. He stands in the big shop windows in Tokyo as in London, with his red cloak, his long white beard and his sack full of toys. Sometimes he is to be seen chatting with Buddhist deities, with the hammer-bearing Daikoku, with Ebisu the fisherman, with fat naked Hotei, and with Benten, the fair but frail. In fact, with the American Billiken, Santa Claus may be considered as the latest addition to the tolerant theocracy of Japan.

Asako attended High Mass at the Catholic Cathedral in Tsukiji, the old foreign settlement. The music was crude; and there was a long sermon in Japanese. The magnificent bearded bishop, who officiated, was flanked by two native priests. But the familiar sounds and movements of the office soothed her, and the fragrance of the incense. The centre of the aisle was covered with straw mats where the Japanese congregation was squatting. Chairs for the foreigners were placed in the side aisles These were mostly members of the various Embassy and Legation staffs. For a moment Asako feared recognition. Then she remembered how entirely Japanese she had become—in appearance.

Mr. Ito called during the afternoon to wish a Merry Christmas. Asako regaled him with thin green tea and little square cakes of ground rice, filled with a kind of bean paste called "an." She kept Tanaka in the room all the time; for Sadako's remarks about marriage with Ito had alarmed her. He was most agreeable, however, and most courteous. He amused Asako with stories of his experiences abroad. He admired the pretty little house and its position on the river bank; and, when he bowed his thanks for Asako's hospitality, he expressed a wish that he might come again many times in future.

"I am afraid of him," Asako had confided to Tanaka, when the guest had departed, "because Sada San said that he wants to divorce his wife and marry me. You are to stop here with me in the room whenever he comes. Do not leave me alone, please."

"Ladyship is daimyo," the round face answered; "Tanaka is faithful samurai. Tanaka gives life for Ladyship!"

* * * * *

It was the week before New Year. All along the Ginza, which is the main thoroughfare of Tokyo, along the avenue of slender willow trees which do their gallant utmost to break the monotony of the wide ramshackle street, were spread every evening the stock-in-trade of the yomise, the night shops, which cater their most diverse wares for the aimless multitudes sauntering up and down the sidewalks. There are quack medicines and stylograph pens, clean wooden altar cabinets for the kitchen gods, and images of Daikoku and Ebisu; there are cheap underclothing and old hats, food of various kinds, boots and books and toys. But most fascinating of all are the antiquities. Strewn over a square six feet of ground are curios, most attractive to the unwary, especially by the deceptive light of kerosene lamps. One in a thousand perhaps may be a piece of real value; but almost every object has a character and a charm of its own. There are old gold screens, lacquer tables and cabinets, bronze vases, gilded Buddhas, fans, woodcuts, porcelains, kakemono (hanging pictures), makimono (illustrated scrolls), inro (lacquer medicine boxes for the pocket), netsuke (ivory or bone buttons, through which the cords of the tobacco pouch are slung), tsuba (sword hilts of iron ornamented with delightful landscapes of gold and silver inlay). The Ginza at night-time is a paradise for the minor collector.

"Kore wa ikura? (How much is this?)" asked Asako, picking up a tiny silver box, which could slip into a waistcoat pocket. Inside were enshrined three gentle Buddhas of old creamy ivory, perfectly carved to the minutest petal of the full-blown lotus upon which each reposed.

"Indeed, it is the end of the year. We must sell all things cheaply," answered the merchant. "It is asked sixty yen for true ancient artistic object."

"Such a thing is not said," replied Asako, her Japanese becoming quite fluent with the return of her light-heartedness. "Perhaps a joke is being made. It would be possible to give ten yen."

The old curio vender, with the face and spare figure of Julius Caesar, turned aside from such idle talk with a shrug of hopelessness. He affected to be more interested in lighting his slender pipe over the chimney of the lamp which hung suspended over his wares.

"Ten yen! Please see!" said Asako, showing a banknote. The merchant shook his head and puffed. Asako turned away into the stream of passers-by. She had not gone, ten yards, however, before she felt a touch on her kimono sleeve. It was Julius Caesar with his curio.

"Indeed, okusan, there must be reduction. Thirty yen; take it, please."

He pressed the little box into Asako's hand.

"Twenty yen," she bargained, holding out two notes.

"It is loss! It is loss!" he murmured; but he shuffled back to his stall again, very well content.

"I shall send it to Geoffrey," thought Asako; "it will bring him good luck. Perhaps he will write to me and thank me. Then I can write to him."

The New Year is the greatest of Japanese festivals. Japanese of the middle and lower classes live all the year round in a thickening web of debt. But during the last days of the year these complications are supposed to be unraveled and the defaulting debtor must sell some of his family goods, and start the New Year with a clean slate. These operations swell the stock-in-trade of the yomise.

On New Year's Day the wife prepares the mochi cakes of ground rice, which are the specialities of the season; and the husband sees to the erection of his door posts of the two kadomatsu (corner pine trees), little Christmas trees planted in a coil of rope. Then, attired in his frock-coat and top hat, if he be a haikara gentleman, or in his best kimono and haori, if he be an old-fashioned Japanese, he goes round in a rickshaw to pay his complimentary calls, and to exchange o medetō (respectfully lucky!), the New Year wish. He has presents for his important patrons, and cards for his less influential acquaintances. For, as the Japanese proverb says, "Gifts preserve friendship." At each house, which he visits, he sips a cup of sake, so that his return home is often due to the rickshaw man's assistance, rather than to his own powers of self-direction. In fact, as Asako's maid confided to her mistress, "Japanese wife very happy when New Year time all finish."

* * * * *

On the night following New Year, snow fell. It continued to fall all the next morning until Asako's little garden was as white as a bride-cake. The irregularities of her river-side lawn were smoothed out under the white carpet. The straw coverings, which a gardener's foresight had wrapped round the azalea shrubs and the dwarf conifers, were enfolded in a thick white shroud. Like tufts of foam on a wave, the snow was tossed on the plumes of the bamboo clump, which hid the neighbour's dwelling, and made a bird's nest of Asako's tiny domain.

Beyond the brown sluggish river, the roofs and pinnacles of Asakusa were more fairy-like than a theatre scene. Asako was thinking of that first snow-white day, which introduced Geoffrey and her to the Embassy and to Yae Smith.

She shivered. Darkness was falling. A Japanese house is a frail protection in winter time; and a charcoal fire in a wooden box is poor company. The maid came in to close the shutters for the night. Where was Tanaka? He had gone out to a New Year party with relatives. Asako felt her loneliness all of a sudden; and she was grateful for the moral comfort of cousin Sadako's sword. She drew it from its sheath and examined the blade, and the fine work on the hilt, with care and alarm, like a man fingering a serpent.

No sooner was the house silenced than the wind arose. It smote the wooden framework with an unexpected buffet almost like an earthquake. The bamboo grove began to rattle like bones; and the snow slid and fell from the roof in dull thuds.

There was a sharp rap at the front door. Asako started and thrust the dagger into the breast of her kimono. She had been lying full length on a long deckchair. Now she put her feet to the ground. O Hana, the maid, came in and announced that Ito San had called. Asako, half-pleased and half-apprehensive, gave instructions for him to be shown in. She heard a stumbling on the steps of her house; then Ito lurched into the room. His face was very red, and his voice thick. He had been paying many New Year calls.

"Happy New Year, Asa San, Happy New Year!" he hiccoughed, grasping her hand and working it up and down like a pump-handle. "New Year in Japan very lucky time. All Japanese people say New Year time very lucky. This New Year very lucky for Ito. No more dirty business, no more Yoshiwara, no more pimp. I am millionaire, madame. I have made one hundred thousand pounds, five hundred thousand dollars gold. I now become giin giin (Member of Parliament). I become great party organizer, great party boss, then daijin (Minister of State), then taishi (Ambassador), then soridaijin (Prime Minister). I shall be greatest man in Japan. Japan greatest country in the world. Ito greatest man in the world. And I marry Asa San to-morrow, next day, any day."

Ito was sprawling in the deck chair, which divided the little sitting-room into two parts and cut off Asako's retreat. She was trembling on a bamboo stool near the shuttered window. She was terribly frightened. Why did not Tanaka come?

"Speak to me, Asa San," shouted the visitor; "say to me very glad, very, very glad, will be very nice wife of Ito. Fujinami give you to me. I have all Fujinami's secrets in my safe box. Ito greatest man in Japan. Fujinami very fear of me. He give me anything I want. I say, give me Asa San. Very, very love."

Asako remaining without speech, the Japanese frowned at her.

"Why so silence, little girl? Say, I love you, I love you like all foreign girls say. I am husband now. I never go away from this house until you kiss me. You understand?"

Asako gasped.

"Mr. Ito, it is very late. Please, come some other day. I must go to bed now."

"Very good, very good. I come to bed with you," said Ito, rolling out of his chair and putting one heavy leg to the ground. He was earing a kimono none too well adjusted, and Asako could see his hairy limb high up the thigh. Her face must have reflected her displeasure.

"What?" the Japanese shouted; "you don't like me. Too very proud! No dirty Jap, no yellow man, what? So you think, Madame Lord Princess Barrington. In the East, it may be, ugly foreign women despise Japs. But New York, London, Paris—very different, ha! ha! New York girl say, Hello, Jap! come here! London girl say, Jap man very nice, very sweet manner, very soft eyes. When I was in London I have five or six girls, English girls, white girls, very beauty girls, all together, all very love! London time was great fine time!"

Asako felt helpless. Her hand was on the hilt of her dagger, but she still hoped that Ito might come to his senses and go away.

"There!" he cried, "I know foreign custom. I know everything. Mistletoe! Mistletoe! A kiss for the mistletoe, Asa San!"

He staggered out of his chair and came towards her, like a great black bird. She dodged him, and tried to escape round the deck chair. But he caught hold of her kimono. She drew her sword.

"Help! Help!" she cried. "Tanaka!"

Something wrenched at her wrist, and the blade fell. At the same moment the inner shoji flew open like the shutter of a camera. Tanaka rushed into the room.

Asako did not turn to look again until she was outside the room with her maid and her cook trembling beside her. Then she saw Tanaka and Ito locked in a wrestler's embrace, puffing and grunting at each other, while their feet were fumbling for the sword which lay between them. Suddenly both figures relaxed. Two foreheads came together with a wooden concussion. Hands were groping where the feet had been. One set of fingers, hovering over the sword, grasped the hilt. It was Tanaka; but his foot slipped. He tottered and fell backward. Ito was on the top of him. Asako closed her eyes. She heard a hoarse roar like a lion. When she dared to look again, she saw Tanaka kneeling over Ito's body. With a wrench he pulled Sadako's dagger out of the prostrate mass. It was followed by a jet of blood, and then by a steady trickle from body, mouth and nostrils, which spread over the matting. Slowly and deliberately, Tanaka wiped first the knife and then his hands on the clothes of his victim. Then he felt his mouth and throat.

"Sa! Shimatta! (There, finished!)" he said. He turned towards the garden side, threw open the shoji and the amado. He ran across the snow-covered lawn; and from beyond the unearthly silence which followed his departure, come the distant sound of a splash in the river.

At last, Asako said helplessly: "Is he dead?"

The cook, a man, was glad of the opportunity to escape.

"I go and call doctor," he said.

"No, stay with me," said Asako; "I am afraid. O Hana can go for the doctor."

Asako and the cook waited by the open shoji, staring blankly at the body of Ito. Presently the cook said that he must go and get something. He did not return. Asako called to him to come. There was no answer. She went to look for him in his little three-mat room near the kitchen. It was empty. He had packed his few chattels in his wicker basket and had decamped.

Asako resumed her watch at the sitting-room door, an unwilling Rizpah. It was as though she feared that, if she left her post, somebody might come in and steal Ito. But she could have hardly approached the corpse even under compulsion. Sometimes it seemed to move, to try to rise; but it was stuck fast to the matting by the resinous flow of purple blood. Sometimes it seemed to speak:

"Mistletoe! Mistletoe! Kiss me, Asa San!"

Gusts of cold wind came in from the open windows, touching the dead man curiously, turning over his kimono sleeves. Outside, the bamboo grove was rattling like bones; and the caked snow fell from the roof in heavy thuds.

* * * * *

O Hana returned with a doctor and a policeman. The doctor loosened Ito's kimono, and at once shook his head.

The policeman wore a blue uniform and cape; and a sword dragged at his side. He had produced a notebook and a pencil from a breast pocket.

"What is your name?" he asked Asako; "what is your age? your father's and mother's name? What is your address? Are you married? Where is your husband? How long have you known this man? Were you on familiar terms? Did you kill him? How did you kill him? Why did you kill him?"

The questions buzzed round Asako's head like a swarm of hornets. It had never occurred to the unfortunate girl that any suspicion could fall upon her. Three more policemen had arrived.

"Every one in this house is arrested," announced the first policeman.

"Put out your hands," he ordered Asako. Rusty handcuffs were slipped over her delicate wrists. One of the policemen had produced a coil of rope, which he proceeded to tie round her waist and then round the waist of O Hana.

"But what have I done?" asked Asako plaintively.

The policeman took no notice. She could hear two of them upstairs in her bedroom, talking and laughing, knocking open her boxes and throwing things about.

Asako and her maid were led out of the house like two performing animals. It was bitterly cold, and Asako had no cloak. The road was already full of loafers. They stared angrily at Asako. Some laughed. Some pulled at her kimono as she passed. She heard one say:

"It is a geisha; she has murdered her sweetheart."

At the police station, Asako had to undergo the same confusing interrogatory before the chief inspector.

"What is your name? What is your age? Where do you live? What are your father's and mother's names?"

"Lies are no good," said the inspector, a burly unshaven man; "confess that you have killed this man."

"But I did not kill him," protested Asako.

"Who killed him then? You must know that," said the inspector triumphantly.

"It was Tanaka," said Asako.

"Who is this Tanaka?" the inspector asked the policeman.

"I do not know; perhaps it is lies," he answered sulkily.

"But it is not lies," expostulated Asako, "he ran away through the window. You can see his footmarks in the snow."

"Did you see the marks?" the policeman was asked.

"No; perhaps there were no marks."

"Did you look?"

"I did not look actually, but—"

"You're a fool!" said the inspector.

The weary questioning continued for quite two hours, until Asako had told her story of the murder at least three times. The unfamiliar language confused her, and the reiterated refrain:

"You, now confess; you killed the man!"

Asako was chilled to the bone. Her head was aching; her eyes were aching; her legs were aching with the ordeal of standing. She felt that they must soon give way altogether.

At last, the inspector closed his questionnaire.

"Sa!" he ejaculated, "it is past midnight. Even I must sleep sometimes. Take her away to the court, and lock her in the 'sty,' To-morrow the procurator will examine at nine o'clock. She is pretending to be silly and not understanding; so she is probably guilty."

Again the handcuffs and the degrading rope were fastened upon her. She felt that she had already been condemned.

"May I send word to my friends?" she asked. Surely even the Fujinami would not abandon her to her fate.

"No. The procurator's examination has not yet taken place. After that, sometimes permission can be granted. That is the law."

She was left waiting in a stone-flagged guard-room, where eight or nine policemen stared at her impertinently.

"A pretty face, eh?" they said, "it looks like a geisha! Who is taking her to the court? It is Ishibashi. Oh, so! He is always the lucky chap!"

A rough fellow thrust his hand up her kimono sleeve, and caught hold of her bare arm near the shoulder.

"Here, Ishibashi," he cried; "you have caught a fine bird this time."

The policeman Ishibashi picked up the loose end of the rope, and drove Asako before him into a closed van, which was soon rumbling along the deserted streets.

She was made to alight at a tall stone building, where they passed down several echoing corridors, until, at the end of a little passage a warder pushed open a door. This was the "sty," where prisoners are kept pending examination in the procurator's court. The floor and walls were of stone. It was bitterly cold. There was no window, no light, no firebox, and no chair. Alone, in the petrifying darkness, her teeth chattering, her limbs trembling, poor Asako huddled her misery into a corner of the dirty cell, to await the further tender mercies of the Japanese criminal code. She could hear the scuttering of rats. Had she been ten times guilty, she felt that she could not have suffered more!

* * * * *

Daylight began to show under the crack of the door. Later on a warder came and beckoned to Asako to follow him. She had not touched food for twenty hours, but nothing was offered to her. She was led into a room with benches like a schoolroom. At the master's desk sat a small spotted man with a cloak like a scholar's gown, and a black cap with ribbons like a Highlander's bonnet. This was the procurator. At his side, sat his clerk, similarly but less sprucely garbed.

Asako, utterly weary, was preparing to sit down on one of the benches. The warder pulled her up by the nape of her kimono. She had to stand during her examination.