University of Virginia Library

One Week Later

All day long, I have been sewing and embroidering on my wedding garments. My fingers are all pricked and sore, and my mother declares I have grown clumsy and stupid. She does not know that I am trembling with excitement and nervousness. For, oh, that voice in the early morning! “Dewdrop!” he calls softly, with his lips right close to the thin, partitioned window; and then again, a little louder, “Dewdrop!” I shrink back behind a screen, quivering. If my august stepfather should awake and stroll through the garden! How good were the gods to place the trees so close together!

“Dewdrop!” How sweet and winning his voice is! How different from the guttural, stupid sound of that hideous Shinobu Taro's!

“Dewdrop! Are you awake yet?” Silence a brief time, and then: “I have been waiting here since sunrise. I thought I heard you move. Pray, if you are indeed awake, will you not come out to me a little moment only?”

Again silence.

“Just one glance at your face!”

He waits in vain for even one little word or sign from me. Then, he taps hard on the metal gable.

“Dewdrop! Little Dewdrop!”

I creep from the room with stealthy step. I fling myself, sobbing, into Madame Summer's arms.

“Oh, go to him, dear Madame Summer! Tell him the honorable lie--that I am away visiting--that I am ill--that I am dead, even!”

Such a long, heavy day! I thought that the sun would never, never go down, and that it was making mock of my misery. Every stitch I sewed pricked not only my fingers but my heart. A few tiny red drops fell on some silken omeshi.

My mother scolded me, shrilly. “Stupid girl! That is no way to hold the honorable needle. Is all my teaching to come to nothing? See how your fingers are bleeding!”

“It is my heart!” I said, within me.

Twice to-day, I have applied my eye to the little hole in my shutter. I do not see him, but I feel his presence. He is somewhere near me. What does he think of me? What can he think?

To-night, I coaxed Madame Summer to go out with me for a little stroll in the moonlight. As we were stealing from the house, my stepfather, who was drinking, heard us. He called out, drowsily:

“Where are you going, my honorable daughter?”

He addresses me so since my betrothal. He used to call me, “unworthy daughter.”

“For just a little maiden walk with the stars, dear my honorable father,” I returned; “Madame Summer accompanies me.”>

“It is well,” he answered, still more drowsily.

Ido followed behind us all the way. Some naughty spirit caught hold of my tongue, and I rattled on continuously to my old nurse, laughing merrily at the smallest provocation, and making much fun and nonsense at all things.

Ido said never a word to us; he merely followed close behind. I wonder whether he feared old Madame Summer; or was it his honorable respect for little insignificant me?