University of Virginia Library

3. Chapter III

Old Madame Yamada sat grumbling over her pipe. Her temper was bad, and she found food to increase its acidity in the fact that Spring-morning was not at hand to wait upon her.

Her daughter-in-law had, from the first, been a source of irritation to her, despite the fact that she seemed meek and plastic as wax in the hands of the older woman. After the going of Omi, she had shown a devoted disposition to cater to the slightest desire or caprice of her mother-in- law. By law, she was, of course, under the dominion of the older woman; but something more than mere man-made laws had taken possession of Spring-morning. In the face of unspeakable hardship, privation and eternal denouncing, she remained always the same--meek, sweet, cheerful, docile. Madame Yamada had not troubled herself to discover the reason for the change in the disposition of the somewhat fractious girl she had previously known. She simply took advantage of it. When she expressed her intention of going to live in Yokohama, Spring-morning cheerfully packed her few belongings, made farewell calls upon her various relatives, and submissively, uncomplainingly made the long journey to the big metropolis, so far away from the home she had always known and the few poor relatives, whom, despite their poverty and helplessness, she loved.

In Yokohama, they found lodgment in a shabby quarter of the town, and here the older woman calmly announced that henceforth she looked to Spring-morning for their entire support. It was war-time. Madame Yamada was well aware that the girl would find it difficult to obtain employment of any sort in the city. Employers were discharging, not engaging, workers; and always Spring-morning, who tramped the strange, endless streets of the big city by day, came back at night with empty hands. A country girl, ignorant of even the likely places where she might obtain work, she found herself shouldered aside everywhere. Shabby, speaking even a different dialect from that of the locality, she was unable to compete with the smart, swiftly moving, sophisticated girls of the city.

It had, therefore, lately become the habit of the older woman, upon the return of the girl from her hopeless quest for work, to make remarks of this nature:

“Hoi! You have been gone seven hours, it seems. Your clogs are wearing out, and even clogs are costly in these days. You come back with nothing! Well, these are strange times. A strong and healthy, aye, and a beautiful girl--and young--yet unable to make a livelihood! Hoi, my girl, there are tricks to learn--tricks!”

Always Spring-morning brooded and shuddered over these “tricks” she should learn. Her rounded cheeks lost their plumpness and their wonderful rosy hue. Shadows crept under her wistful eyes; and her small, pretty mouth, which seemed made for dimples to play about, drooped pathetically. A weariness and languor seized upon her, and presently she found it a matter of hard labor to pull her weary feet along through the hard streets of the seaport.

Then came a day when she dropped in a dead faint at the feet of a foreign priest. Kindly hands picked the unconscious girl's frail little form up, and she was carried into a cool place, where she was ministered to and cared for. For a time after this, her lot was at least temporarily improved.

Through the kindly offices of Father Daly, Spring- morning found employment in several of the pretentious bungalows on the cliffs of Yokohama, where the foreign residents live, and through him she made the friendship of a sweet and charming American girl.

Spring-morning's little hands were as soft and fine as her native cherry-blossoms. They seemed, indeed, like pretty helpless flowers, made solely to be cherished and caressed. Nevertheless, her new friends soon discovered that they were capable and even wonderful hands. The tiny fingers could make the finest of embroidery and microscopic stitches. The work was not particularly remunerative, but the girl's young heart overflowed with grateful joy at the opportunity of at least being permitted to earn her living, and it was with almost pathetic joy that she brought her first wages to the grumbling, muttering, nagging old mother-in-law, whose piercing old eyes had watched her so long with such a sinister expression.

She had not confided in her mother-

in-law the fact that she had actually found employment, though the latter suspected from the girl's long absences and her happy demeanor that a change of some kind had come in her fortunes. An evil hope lay deep in the breast of the old woman. She ardently trusted that Spring-morning was profiting by the daily hints given her, and was following that easy method of livelihood open to all girls of beauty and youth.

Madame Yamada had had no other fate in mind for her daughter-in-law when she had brought her to the big city with her. She had intended deliberately to drive Spring- morning to the Yoshiwara. The girl was her property--under her sole control and authority; why should she not profit by her beauty? Many fathers, mothers and brothers all over Japan sold their girls into a similar market. Spring-morning was no better than the thousand other girls who obediently and even piously sacrificed themselves at the behest of those in authority over them. Indeed, in her daughter-in- law's case, there was even a higher reason why she should make the sacrifice. Her honorable husband served the Emperor! Those at home must, at any cost, work to make a place for him should the gods decree he should return, mayhap wounded or disabled.

Despite, however, her determination to use her daughter- in-law's body as a marketable commodity, Madame Yamada was cunningly determined that Spring-morning herself should suggest this expedient, for she knew that should her son return from the war, there would be a fearful day of reckoning for her, when Omi would demand what it was she had done with his wife; for although the young soldier was aware that Spring-morning must take his place to his mother and become her means of support, his boyish mind had not actually conceived the horrible possibility that his wife would be driven to the common lot of the very poor, similarly faced with such a problem. At the period of his going to the front, Omi was in too exalted a state of mind for so cruel a shadow to darken his aspirations. It saddened him, broke his heart indeed, that his wife had shrunk from him, even at the parting, but it had not dashed his high courage, nor his supreme resolve to die gloriously for his Emperor and country, secure in the knowledge that he had dutifully supplied a support for his old mother.

Now, as Madam Yamada sat alone, muttering over her pipe and sake, Spring-morning softly opened the dingy screen, and stood upon the threshold smiling radiantly down upon her. A golden stream of sunlight came through the opened door, and a breath of sweet air as exhilarating as the smiling face of the young girl herself; but Madame Yamada dashed her pipe down savagely upon the hibachi and snarlingly demanded of the girl that she close the shoji, and give an account of her day's adventures. Spring-morning continued to smile, heedlessly forgetting even to close the screen. She advanced upon her mother-in-law with her two hands held out, the rosy fingers doubled over till her fists seemed like round, roguish snow-balls.

“Look!” she cried softly. “What do you suppose, Mother, I have got here in my hands?”

Madame Yamada hobbled to her feet, and stood looking from under lowering brows at the two extended fists of her daughter. Slowly the little fingers uncurled, disclosing in each palm a shining piece of money. The old woman's sharp fingers seized upon the coins with the greedy swiftness of some bird of prey picking up food in its talons.

“Hm! It is insignificant. Is this the extent of your wages, then? How much are you holding back?”

The girl's face fell.

“Is it not a large sum?” she quiveringly asked. “Just think--two whole yen, and I am to have steady employment, so the honorable Miss American has promised me. I work for the foreigners, Mother-in-law, who make their homes on the heights and--”

Madame Yamada, who has been testing the money on her teeth, looked up sharply at that, her beady little eyes glittering, as she knotted the coins in the lining of her sleeve. She made a curt motion to her daughter-in-law to be seated, then painfully came to the mat opposite the girl. She pushed with her

foot the tobacco-bon toward Spring-morning, and the latter silently went to work filling and refilling the bowl of her mother's one-whiff pipe. For some time the old woman smoked in silence. This is what she was thinking:

Here was a pretty state of things! Her daughter-in-law had found fine friends indeed--barbarians! white-faced, bleached-haired, faded-eyed fools who patronized the sacred soil of Dai Nippon[3]. A savage inward anger consumed her withered bosom. She more than hated, she abhorred these accursed foreign devils! It was their very stock and blood which fought the soldiers of Japan--menaced the life of her only son! For these her son's wife must be a servant! The thought tormented--burned her!

After a time, she said with forced calmness:

“I dare say it has not occurred to you that these foreign devils are taking advantage of your youth and ignorance. The amount they pay you is not enough.”

“But,” cried the girl, surprised and hurt, “it is more than twice what many girls receive for similar employment. And the work is pleasant. It is easy to serve those who are kind.”

“You talk the nonsense of a child--you who are married to a soldier of Tenshi-sama[4],” said her mother sternly. “We do not serve foreign devils for the same money we would our own folk. It's not merely payment for our labor, but payment for the degradation of serving those--beneath us! Pah--cheap- -vulgar barbarians! Would you labor as the slave of the esteemed monkey-man?”

“I was glad,” faltered the girl, “to find employment of any kind. We cannot starve.”

“Oh, it is not likely we will starve,” said her mother- in-law. “I have still a little of the marriage-gift money left for our sustenance; but very shortly it too will be gone. Now there are several things for you to do--many ways to make an honest livelihood. That's right, look at me, daughter-in-law. Well, I have something on my mind.”

“Yes? Do tell me what it is. You do not know how anxious I am to serve you,” said Spring-morning gently.

“You say that dutifully enough, and I dare say you really feel to some extent a desire to serve your husband's mother. However, I will test you, Haru-no. Now you know very well the fate of the average girl of beauty who happens also to be a pauper, do you not? Well--er--it's no use to look at me like that. You understand me very well.”

The girl's expression was pathetic. She had half risen upon her heels. Her little, full childish mouth opened as if to speak, then helplessly closed. Through the eyes, piteous and imploring, she was endeavoring to force a smile. The lightness of her tone was not convincing. There rang insistently through her head, at that moment, the words of her mother-in-law during that dreadful period of semi- starvation from which the foreign priest had mercifully saved her. What horrible solution of their troubles had she then meant to suggest to the vague, heedless ears of the young girl?

“Ah, yes,” she answered tremulously. “Of course, I know your meaning, respected mother-in-law, but happily for us both, I am saved from such a fate. See how good the gods have been--see how they befriend even me, so insignificant and unworthy!”

“The gods!” shrieked the old woman, banging her hands harshly together. “What have they to do with such as us? We are the outcasts--the poor--the beggars of Japan. The rod of the gods is heavily upon our backs. We pay for the sins of our previous lives, and it is only through superhuman efforts and sacrifices we can pull ourselves from our miserable pit. It is not enough for you, my girl, to earn a daily livelihood for you and me. You must think of my son-- Omi. For him too, you must work!”

“Omi!” repeated the girl in piteous surprise.

“Yes--your husband,” said the old woman sternly. “Listen to me, Haru-no. Omi may return within a year. It is not sure he will lose his life. You must know that the country will be terribly impoverished when the war is over,

or, it may chance, though not likely, that we may be defeated! What's my son to do? Suppose he returns--sick, helpless! Must he starve? No! No! I tell you it's the sacred duty of the ones left at home to make a place where our heroes may come. It may mean hardship, sacrifice--suffering- -well! What of that? Fill your soul, Spring-morning, with the fire now animating that of my son. Does he--the soldier of your Emperor--fear any hazard? Is there any hardship he is not prepared to face? Does he not ride abroad with the dark horse of Death itself?”

Her fingers moved back and forth, as if animated with a new wild life, as she turned over the leaves of an old and well-worn book.

“See--see, O-Haru-no! Read here the words of the philosophers. Your eyes are bright--read aloud--We are taught--”

She thrust the book upon the trembling girl, but with a pitiful wailing cry, Spring-morning pushed it from her.

“Ah no--o-o--no! It is unnecessary. I know the duty- words by heart. They have rung in my ears--yes, since the day I saw my husband's troop marching--away--away--”

She broke down, sobbing like a distracted child.

“Hush! Hush! Control your grief. Take example from your superiors. It is uncivilized to betray one's inner, stormy emotions. Your husband is a soldier!”

Spring-morning raised her face bravely. The tears had dried upon it, and it was very white and stony.

“Here at home,” pursued the old woman, “you too must be a soldier.”

“I will! I will,” said the girl softly. “I will try, honorable mother-in-law, to be a--soldier!”

She stood up, smiling now, a smile so terribly sweet and pathetic that her mother-in-law turned away. After a moment she asked gently, as though seeking advice in a course to pursue of whose way she was humbly ignorant:

“Instruct me, honorable mother. What am I to do?”

Madame Yamada's harshness returned. She sneered savagely at the girl. She had no patience for such weakness and emotion.

“You know very well what to do. It is not difficult to show beauty when one possesses it.”

Spring-morning was silent, as though in some deep thought. Suddenly she put out her hands imploringly toward the implacable old woman.

“Oh, it is not possible for me to do it,” she said. “Where am I to find the strength for such a life?”

“Not possible!” shouted her mother-in-law. “It is done every day. It is the common lot of such as you.”

“Ah yes, yes--I have known that,” moaned the girl faintly. “I think I have known it from the first--from the day I married Omi. And yet--I know not why, always I have hoped--believed that a better life was for me. Oh--” She cast out her hands again imploringly toward her mother-in- law. “I pray you pardon me for--for my weakness.”

“‘From the decree of heaven there is no escape,’” quoted Madame Yamada roughly. “Why not then go bravely to the task set you? It is not customary for girls of your class to waste so much emotion at such a time. It is better to do even a loathsome task bravely and finely. You are no better than the thousand other women who have gone to the Yoshiwara before you.”

“No better,” repeated the girl dully. “Yet--Omi, your son, madam--he taught me--yes, we talked together of the beautiful--the good, sweet life we would tread together. Never did it enter into the mind of my husband that I should be sent to such a dreadful place.”

Something in the expression of her mother-in-law's face stopped her words. A vital, terrible question seemed to be bursting to find utterance now.

“Omi? Assure me, dear, good, honorable mother, that Omi did not know that I--that I--”

The old woman's eyes had closed, so that nothing was visible save the sinister glint of black. Through this narrow slit, however, Spring-morning felt they rested upon her keenly, cruelly.

“Omi--knew!” she said slowly, deeply.

There was silence for some time between them after that, the girl clutching weakly at the screen behind her and looking at her mother-in-law with an expression upon her face of shock and anguish. Presently the old woman broke in upon the silence, speaking roughly:

“It's not for a life-time, my girl. You can go for a stated period--no longer. There is a law governing the matter, you are aware. We will inquire of the proper authorities. I chose this city in preference to Tokyo or Kyoto or Nagasaki or Osaka, because the Yoshiwara here is said to be prosperous even now at war-time.

“Moreover, it is patronized by your friends--the honorable foreigners, and always they are rich! You will enter as a maiden, understand. It is unwise you should be known as the wife of Omi. Place no shame upon my son's name. With your beauty, it is quite possible you will make powerful friends. It is a most remunerative employment, my girl. There is a fortune even within your hands if you will but have the courage to seize it.”

Spring-morning said nothing. She continued to stare before her in that numbed, dull way of some gentle creature unjustly beaten. Presently the old woman moved across to the casement, and shoving the sliding screen aside, called to the girl:

“Come hither, if you please. Look down there into the street below--and yonder--you will see the wider streets. See the hordes of men as they pass along. Where do you think most of them are going? Is it not a shame that we--you and I- -and my son--should not have part of the wealth that is everywhere in a city like this? Think, O-Haru-no, the value of such a possession as yours--beauty! Why, rightfully used, it may win you the prizes of all the earth!”

She pushed the casement wider apart, showing to the dazzled eyes of the unhappy girl the gay panorama of the streets spread out below them, the endless, shifting passing scenes, the gay, hurrying, careless throngs. Then, with a final dark glance at the girl's white, agonized face, she returned to her pipe by the hibachi, and left Spring-morning crouching there.

For a long time the girl stared out before her with wide, unseeing eyes. The noise, the traffic, the constant moving of passing people and vehicles, she saw not at all, save as in some dim dream. Through her mind passed a panorama of other scenes--scenes of her childhood. She was a little girl, playing in the fields with Omi, and Omi was teaching her how to catch the glistening fireflies. They were paddling in a country stream, screaming with delight. Now they were going to school together, ragged, barefooted, happy.

And now their young heads were close together, as they pored over those fascinating books that Omi had managed to purchase from the sale of their joint labors as fire-fly catchers. To illuminate a single entertainment of some exalted lord, the thousand fireflies they had labored all summer to take had been liberated from their cages, and liberally paid for. Omi had bought the coveted books. Ah, what delicious dreams were those they had then indulged in, as they pored over the pages.

Then there came the day when Omi must run fleetly to overtake his father, and assist him in the rice fields. Henceforth he was to earn three yen a month! It was a fabulous sum in the eyes of the little twelve-year-old girl. Soon, she was very sure, he would become a man, earning maybe ten yen a month, capable of paying rent for a tiny little house all his own. And their honorable fathers had pledged them to each other. Oh, what blissful years stretched in a golden eternity before them. She saw herself just at the age of maturity, with her dreams more golden than ever, and always in her dreams, like some heroic god, Omi walked beside her.

How she had pitied women less fortunate than she, who must live in the big cities, so closely together that there was scarcely air for all to breathe. Then across her happiness there had come a shadow. Some one had told her of the Yoshiwara. Little O-Natsu-san, of the street of Early Dews, had gone away one day upon a journey. Her parents were very poor and her father was

blind. There were little brothers and sisters.

Little O-Natsu-san (Miss Summer-day) had gone away smiling, but her mother had wept, quite terribly, Spring- morning remembered. And O-Natsu-san had never returned. One day Spring-morning had asked her step-mother where it was that O-Natsu-san had gone, smiling so bravely; and the step- mother had told Spring-morning of the Yoshiwara. It was a tale to blanch the cheek and stop the beating heart of one older than she. Such might have been her fate, had said the step-mother, but, happily, from this the gods had saved her. She was to be the bride of Omi.

Thinking only of those dim, sweet scenes of her past, and blind to even the colorful moving throngs which her mother-in-law had bade her study, she became gradually conscious of an insistent strain of sweet music, whistled in the street below. It was the strange, melodious air, savoring of some far land, that caught the girl's attention, and she awoke from her sad dreaming, to listen with bated breath to the silken thread of the sweet tone. Then she leaned over the sill, and sought for the singer in the street below.

He was there in the shadow of a little building across the way, a young white man, with sketch-book in his hand, softly whistling to himself, as he drew the face of Spring- morning. For a moment they looked at each other fairly, and a curious look--was it admiration or sympathy?--came into the face of the artist. He stepped across the street, and came directly beneath her casement. She looked down at him with her eyes slightly widened, as if with half fear, half wonder. Then, as his radiant smile seemed to reach up and fairly warm her, the sob that had been strangling there for utterance broke from her lips, and with a little shivering motion, she closed the screen between them.