University of Virginia Library

9. Chapter IX

There was a faint streak of light in the sky, and the Okusama's gardens were very sweet. Spring-morning cautiously slipped aside a screen, and stood in a reverie, dreamily watching the sun rise. She was a girl given to day-dreaming and star-gazing, to the amusement of the Okusama's servants. She had now been a month in the Tyrrell household. Her work, though ceaseless, was of an erratic nature, for the Okusama knew hardly more than Spring-morning herself exactly what work the girl should do. To keep her constantly busy, and out of sight of her son, this had been the aim of the Okusama, and for this first month at least, she kept Spring- morning engaged upon some task or other from morning till night.

Even at night, it was no uncommon thing for the Okusama to demand service from the girl. Her old enemy, neuralgia, in conjunction with her disordered nerves, combined to make her nights uneasy. At such times, the Japanese girl proved herself invaluable indeed. For hours, while her weary little head drooped and nodded, her small, deft fingers passed over the hot brow of her mistress, or she patiently applied the inevitable poultice of cayenne pepper and egg, believed by the Japanese to be an infallible remedy for neuralgia. Tired as she was at night, the girl was sublimely happy, and glad and grateful for her work. It was an inexpressible relief, which she would not, however, have admitted even to herself, to be away from the cruel, watchful eye of her mother-in- law. Indeed, the one thing that caused her uneasiness at this time was the thought that she had proved undutiful and, as she told herself, unpatriotic, in thus deserting her parent. And as a salve to her guilty conscience, she regularly sent to her mother-in-law her wages, leaving but a tiny pittance for her own necessary expenses.

Her life was a lonely one, for she had been forbidden by her mistress to associate with the servants, and in fact she would have found little in common with them. On the other hand, she kept vividly before her mind the injunctions of Miss Latimer, that her position depended entirely upon her forgetting or ignoring the existence of the Okusama's son--he who had saved her from the Yoshiwara. His appearance in the room where Spring-morning worked, meant the startled and hurried exit of the girl, when that was practicable, and when he had found occasion several times to address a word or two to her she had answered so fearfully and reluctantly, and with such apparent desire to avoid him, that it puzzled and nettled him. He even found himself debating the matter of whether she was merely shy or just ungrateful. Jamison felt he had really done a great kindness to this girl, and her obvious efforts to avoid him irritated him.

When the day was very young, Spring-morning, a country- born child, arose with the sun itself, and for an hour at least her time was all her own. She would sit by the shoji, like one entranced, watching the slow, exquisite tinting of the eastern sky, the dim, pale light, as it crept upon tree and grass, growing ever brighter and more glorious; but though she watched the daily phenomenon of the sunrise with what seemed an enraptured gaze, her thoughts were in fact often very far away. Sometimes they must have been sad, for she would clasp her hands spasmodically together, and stretch them toward the sun itself, as if in its dawning radiance she could see the pale, benign face of the gracious Kwannon[9] herself.

“Namu, amida, Butsu!” (Save us, eternal Buddha!) she prayed ceaselessly.

The prayers and tears of youth are, however, transient; and Spring-morning was very young. Time was slipping sleepily, but happily by, in this house of the Okusama, and gradually somewhat

of her fears and self-reproachings departed, and the strain under which she had been for so long, loosened its tension.

There was now no need, she told herself, to pray so passionately to the gods, for already they had heard and granted many of her prayers. Or--to be more exact--as she told her troubled, wistful self, a strange God, the God of the Kirishitans--was befriending her. He had given her a comfortable home for shelter, a clean, sweet bed on which to rest, and honest wages carefully to be sent to the mother of that absent one!

What if the irate and heartless mother of the absent Omi should seek her vainly in the Yoshiwara, and failing to find her there, trace her here, to the house of the Eijin- san? Had he not promised her that in his house always she would be safe? So had said the good Miss Latimer, and even the Okusama, recently very gracious and kind to the girl, had grudgingly assured her that she might remain in this refuge as long as she desired, but had added the Okusama, somewhat sternly: “As long as you behave yourself.” Spring- morning intended very piously to “behave herself.”

There came a day when she greeted the rising sun with smiles, forgot all her prayers, and felt only that life and earth were very sweet indeed.

In the camphor trees the birds were noisily saluting the Lord of day. There was bustle and stir in the bushes. Spring-morning rolled back from her round, dimpled arms the long sleeves of her kimono, tucked up its scanty skirt with the string of her obi, and daringly ventured out for the first time down into the Okusama's garden.

The damp touch of the dew upon her little bare feet delighted her--it reminded her of her childhood days in the country. She had a childish wish to run across the greensward and to sing. Twice she caught herself unconsciously humming, and clapped her hand upon her round, rosy mouth. For a time she kept moving about the garden, running from bush to bush, stopping by the well to peer for a moment at her own smiling reflection, and pausing by the flowering trees, there to steal a tiny blossom, no larger than her little finger. A quaint, witching little figure she made, wandering like a dryad among the trees and bushes, ever and anon unconsciously singing to herself as she moved.

From the servants' quarters was heard the first slothful stirring of the morning. Yawning cavernously, the still half-asleep Ume came out to the pond with her yoke of pails, there to dip up water for the early bath, for the Okusama had sternly forbidden the common custom of bathing in the family pond in the garden. At the approach of Ume, half fearfully, half mischievously, Spring-morning hid behind a bush. She did not wish to be seen. Her little innocent sojourn in the garden might not be approved should it come to the Okusama's ears, and the girl's fresh, young face was slightly overcast as she realized this with the coming of Ume.

As soon as the latter had disappeared in the direction of the kitchen regions, Spring-morning hastily tripped back across the lawns, pausing, however, as if unable to resist the impulse, to fill her looped-up skirt and sleeves with flower petals, so that they stood out about her in fragrant, overflowing bags. Her room, a temporary one, was on the first floor, and it was but a step down into the garden.

Spring-morning put her hand upon the ledge, and was about to swing up (for she had dropped into the garden from her window), when some one above her shook the heavy-laden flowering vine which clung about the verandas of the house. The loosened blossoms fell in a purple shower upon her.

Startled, she looked up, her little dark head and figure now fairly covered with the glistening petals. To the Okusama's son, watching her unseen, from a casement on the second floor, the girl's upturned face, with its wide eyes of excitement and fear, its little delicate pointed chin and scarlet lips, seemed as exquisite as a flower.

For a moment, she hesitated uncertainly by the casement, looking fearfully

at the heavy vine which had moved so ferociously but a moment before. Some one, she knew, was watching her. Ah, could it be the Okusama, the Okusama who would chide her so angrily for thus idly, foolishly playing with the sunlight and the flowers? The troubled look upon her face deepened; her lips began to quiver, and she felt herself yielding to the inclination to cry, when a voice--one that she knew very well, whose half gentle, half humorous tones had never failed to thrill her, and to which often, unseen by her mistress or the Eijin-san himself, she had hid behind screens and sliding walls to listen to, called softly to her now.

“Spring-morning! I say--Spring-morning!”

She remained, trembling, by the vine, too fearful even to look up; but again the voice softly, insistently called to her:

“Spring-morning--I say--look up here.” And when she had obeyed him, he met her shy, still fearful glance with a smile that seemed to the girl as bright as the rising sun itself. “Now I want you to stay right where you are a few minutes. I am going to make a picture of you. Wait a moment till I get my things. Don't move.” And he disappeared into the house in a hurried quest for palette and brushes.

She hesitated only a moment, and then climbed through her window and back into the safe shelter of her room. She looked down into the garden, staring with unseeing eyes at the glistening green of grass and tree, and the awakening, opening flowers that seemed to smile up at her in the dawning light. But her own eyes were brighter than the light, and her lips were apart, as she listened with beating heart to the Eijin-san, as, now reproachfully, he called to her: “Spring-morning--I say--where are you, Spring-morning?”

Fearful that her mistress might be aroused, she put forth her head from the casement like a timid little mouse, which ventures but a questioning peep, and--

“I--I nod can speag unto you,” she said with gentle sadness. “Thas a beautiful sun! Good-a-nide!”