University of Virginia Library

24. Chapter XXIV

Under the cool linen sheets of the great Western bed which had once been such a source of mystery and joy to her, Spring-morning lay tossing and moaning. Kneeling by her side, her trembling fingers replacing the cloths upon the head of the girl, was the Okusama. Less than a year before, the Japanese girl had knelt by the side of her mistress and touched her aching head with her cool, soothing little fingers. Now the Okusama, patiently, and with even a brooding tenderness, ministered to her.

Out in the ozashiki the others could hear the cries of the sick girl and no one made even an effort to speak until presently the moaning had died away, and they knew that, exhausted, Spring-morning rested.

It was Miss Latimer who broke the bitter silence as she turned from Jamison to Omi.

“Jamison—Mr. Yamada—oh, I wish I could say something that would help you both. Jamison—”

She turned to her friend, who, sitting at his desk, with elbows planted squarely upon it, was staring out before him blankly.

“Jamy, please go upstairs to Spring-morning. Let me speak to this man. I am sure I can persuade him to—to go. I am sure that everything can be arranged rightly.”

Jamison turned around heavily in his seat. There was an expression in his face that dismayed Miss Latimer. It was the same dogged, stubborn look that was in his face on that night when he had defied his mother for Spring-morning.

“My mother is with her,” he said. “She will want for nothing.”

“But, Jamison—” Edith went over and stood behind him, resting one hand lightly on his shoulder. “She needs you!”

“You are mistaken,” he answered coolly.

“You are going to promise me,” she said, “that you will not hold anything—that you will not be angry with that poor little thing.”

“I had already told her that,” said Jamison. “She knew I was not angry. I forgave her—wanted only to protect and cherish her.” He passed his hand wearily across his eyes, as though they pained him, but a moment later, as though shaking off some temporary weakness, he straightened himself up in his seat, looked up at Miss Latimer and said:

“Just before you came in, Edith, my wife—I mean Spring- morning—deliberately made her choice between this man and me. She showed clearly that she considered herself the wife of Omi. She followed him—prepared to return to him, and only your sudden appearance startled and weakened her. She would be with him now—in his house, as his wife, but for that.”

He gripped the arms of his chair hard.

“Under the circumstances I do not want her. When she has recovered from her seizure, let her go, as she wished to- -with her husband!”

He stood up, big and aggressive-looking now, no longer the loving, happy-natured, careless boy who had fallen so desperately in love and who had been so enamored with everything Japanese, but a cynical man, wounded and disillusioned.

“You don't mean that,” cried Edith. “I won't believe it of you. You do not realize what you are saying, Jamison. You are bitter and unjust.”

“On the contrary,” he said, “I appreciate the situation precisely now, and I believe so does—this gentleman.” To Edith's surprise, Omi gravely bowed in assent. She turned to him with an element of hauteur and indignation both in her look and voice.

“You ought to go out of this house, Mr. Yamada. You have no right here. You are taking advantage of Mr. Tyrrell's—” She sought a word and added “—indisposition. It is quite impossible for his wife to see you again.”

As he did not reply, she turned back to Jamison, her eyes flashing with indignation.

“Tell him to go. Surely you are not going to let that man walk out of here with your wife—the girl you married. You know that she is your wife. Father Daly himself married you, and you cannot break a marriage like that. You know as well as I do that she never lived a day—an hour, even, with this man as his wife, and that foolish ceremony—why, she was nothing but a poor little martyr—a puppet for those ambitious wretches to move.”

“That is the way I looked at it at first,” said Jamison calmly, “but it seems she regarded it in another light. To her that marriage was more real than the one with me. She had been deceiving me, it seems, for months—in fact, ever since I married her. I was nothing in the eyes of her people, or hers[16], it would seem, save a sort of—of— Yoshiwara, as her mother said, and like the women of the Yoshiwara she was calmly prepared to leave me and return to her husband after a stated period. It was a cool, miserable business proposition to these Japs, and she was one in the combination to fleece me.”

“I would not have believed it of you,” said the girl, looking at him with angry,

indignant eyes. “I wouldn't have believed you capable of such—meanness—injustice. Even if it were true that her people regarded you merely as a means of obtaining money, I am very sure that that was not in her mind when she married you. Ah, think a little while, Jamy. Why, I knew as soon as I looked at her face that day in the church that she loved you. She did, indeed.”

She went nearer to him, her voice very sweet and pleading, and as she spoke for Spring-morning, Jamison Tyrrell looked at her curiously, wonderingly.

“Please promise that you will not hold anything against her now, Jamison—even her following this man. It's not easy to throw up the customs of centuries. She believed it to be her duty. I talked with her a long time last night trying to impress on her that she was wrong, and I only wish I had been as successful as I know you will be if you try to win her. We can see by the way she is suffering now the struggle that must have been going on within her.”

Jamison turned his face away, and his head slightly dropped. He seemed to be gloomily ruminating over the situation. Presently, in a low voice he asked her:

“What do you think I should do, Edith? So long as she considers herself the wife of this man and wishes to go with him, do you expect me, in spite of that, to hold her—to force her to stay with me here!”

“Yes, I do,” said the girl, and suddenly she threw back her head with a beautiful motion of pride and bravery, and her clear gray eye met his squarely. “And I will tell you why, though I wonder that you do not know it already. Spring- morning is soon to become the mother of your child.”

At her words a startling change came to the faces of both men. Jamison's eyes were fastened as if in amazing doubt upon Miss Latimer's face, while the muscles on the face of the Japanese were jerking up and down, so that his yellow face seemed to move like some animated mask, as vainly he sought to control it. A moment later Jamison sank down in his chair, and throwing out his arms in a motion of complete exhaustion and despair, he buried his face upon them. When Edith, who had bent above him with an exclamation of womanly pity, looked up again, she found the Japanese was gone.

“Look, Jamy,” said she softly. “See, Omi is gone. Was not that fine of him! Now,” she cried joyously, “everything is all right, and you and Spring-morning are going to be happy, just as the fairy-stories have it, forever and ever.” But though her words were triumphantly joyous, they ended in a brave sob, and Jamison, looking up at her, saw that she too was crying.

“Did it mean so much to you, Edith?” he asked gently. “Y-your happiness, Jamy?” she said. “It—it meant— everything!”