XIII In Which Two Men Learn of a Sister’s Sacrifice
Jack Bigelow’s usually sunny face was bleached to the ashiness of fear and despair. He was so nervous that he could not keep still a moment at a time, but would get up and pace the length of the car, only to return and look with eyes that attested the heartache within at the other man, silent and grim. Taro seemed the calmer, but well the younger man knew that beneath that subdued exterior slumbered a fire that needed but a breath to be turned into avenging fury.
At last they reached their destination. The little town once again! But this night Jack was not alone. There was no star or moon overhead to lighten their pathway; a dull, drizzly, sleety rain was falling. In silence they left the car; in silence plodded through the mud of the road and the damp grass of the field beyond. The little garden gate creaked on its hinges as they went through. They saw the dim outlines of the old palace before them, with its wide balconies and sloping roofs. Half-way up the garden was the family pond, freshened by a hidden spring, and the little winding brook which wound hither and thither showed how it emptied into the bay beyond. There was even a tiny boat moored on a toy-like island in the centre of the pond.
For the first time Taro Burton paused, and looked with dreadful eyes at its dull surface, which even the darkness of the night and the miserable rain could not obliterate entirely. What were the memories that crowded back on him, suffocating him? Here it was that he and Yuki had grown up together. The little boat was the same, the island as small and neat, the house seemed as ever; nothing had changed. Yes, there was Yuki! A deep groan slipped from his lips.
There was a difference of seven years in their ages, but a stronger bond of sympathy and comradeship had existed between these two than is usual between brother and sister. Their nationality had to a large extent isolated them from other children, for the Japanese children had laughed at their hair and eyes, and called them “Kirishitans” (Christians). Until he was seven years of age, Taro had manfully, though bitterly, fought his battles alone. He had been a queer, brooding little lad, of passionate and violent temper, and, apparently, scorning any overtures of friendship from any one outside his own household.
When the little sister had come, the boy had gone suddenly wild with joy, and had proceeded to bestow upon her the same worshipful love his mother gave exclusively to him, for Snowflake had been born when their English father lay at the gates of death, her tiny soul fluttering into life just as that of her father drifted outward into eternity, so that to Omatsu, the mother, who was passionately absorbed in her grief, her arrival had been a source of irritation. But Taro had carried her to the family temple, and had, himself, named her “Snowflake” (Yuki), for she had come at a time when all the land was covered with whiteness. There had been a frost and even a snowfall, which is rare in that part of the country. Moreover, she resembled a snowflake, so soft and white and pure.
How was it possible for him, after all these years, to come, as he now had come, once more to this place of which she had always been a part, and with which she had always been lovingly associated in his mind, and not be filled with emotions that rent his heart. She had been his inspiration and all the world to him.
He remembered how they would drift around in their tiny boat, and she, little autocrat, would perch before him, her eyes dancing and shining, while he told her the story of the fisher-boy Urashima and his bride, the daughter of the dragon king. And when he would finish, for the hundredth time, perhaps, she would say, “See, Taro-sama, I am the princess, and you the fisher-boy. We are sailing, sailing, sailing on the sea ‘where Summer never dies,’” and he, to please her fancy, drifted on and on with her, around and around the little pond, until the sun began to sink in the west and the little mother would call them in-doors.
Now the monotonous drip, drip, drip of the rain-drops as they plashed from the weeping willow-trees that surrounded the tiny lake, fell upon its dull surface with mournful sound. Taro groaned again.
When he had knocked loudly a man came shuffling round from the rear of the house, and, in reply to his inquiry for Madam Omatsu, informed him gruffly that she had retired.
It did not matter; he must awaken her, Taro, who had found voice, told him with such insistence that the servant fled ignominiously to obey him. They waited for some time, out in the melancholy night. There was no sound from within the house. Taro hammered on the door once more. Then a faint light appeared from a window close by the door, and the man’s head showed again. He begged their honorable patience. He would open in a fraction of a second. He was very humble and servile now, and, as he admitted them, backed before them, bowing and bobbing at every step, for his mistress’s entire household had been taught to treat foreigners with the greatest deference and respect.
“Go to your mistress,” said Taro, briefly, “and tell her that her son desires to see her at once.”
There was immediately a fluttering at the other side of the shoji. Taro saw an eye withdraw from a hole. There were a few minutes of silence, and then the shoji parted and a woman entered the room. Her mother-love must have prompted her to rush into the arms of her son, for she had not seen him in five years, but, whatever her emotions, she skilfully concealed them, for the paltry reason that her son was accompanied by a stranger, an honorable foreign friend; and it behooved her to affect the finest manners. Consequently she prostrated herself gracefully, bowing and bowing, until Taro strode rapidly over to her and lifted her to her feet.
She was quite pretty and very gentle and graceful. Her face, oval in contour, was smooth and unwrinkled as a girl’s, for Japanese women age slowly. It was hard to believe she was the mother of the tall man now holding her at arm’s length and looking down at her with such deep, questioning eyes.
“Where is my sister, Yuki?” he demanded, hoarsely.
“Yuki?” Madam Omatsu smiled with saintly confidence. She had retired. Would they pray wait till morning? Ah, how was her honorable son, her august offspring? She began fondling her boy now, stroking his face, standing on tiptoe to kiss it, ecstatically smoothing and caressing his hands, feeling his strange clothes, and laughing joyously at their likeness to those of her dead husband’s. But the dark shadow on Taro’s face was deepening, nor would he return or submit to his mother’s caresses till his fears regarding his sister were stilled.
“Send for her,” he said, briefly, and she knew he would not be gainsaid.
Send for her! Ah, Madam Omatsu begged her noble son’s pardon ten million times, but she had made a great mistake. His sister had, of course, retired, but it was not within their augustly miserable and honorably unworthy domicile. She had gone out on a visit to some friends.
Taro undid the clinging hands and pushed her from him, his brooding eyes glaring.
“Where?”
Where? Why, it was only a short distance—perhaps two rice-fields’ lengths from their house.
“The house?—the people’s name?”
Madam Omatsu whitened a trifle. Her eyes narrowed, her lips quivered. She tried once more frantically to prevaricate.
The people’s name? She could not quite recall, but the next day—the next day surely—
“Ah-h,” said her son, with delirious brutality, “you are deceiving me, lying to me. I demand to know where she is. I am her rightful guardian. I must see her at once.”
Madam Omatsu protested with faint vehemence, but she did not weep. She even essayed a little laugh, that reminded Jack eerily of Yuki. In the dimly lighted room she looked strangely like her daughter, save that she was much smaller and quite thin and frail, whereas Yuki was rosy and healthy.
Taro was speaking to her in Japanese, in a sharp, cruel voice, and she was answering gently, meekly, humbly, consolingly. Jack felt sorry for her. Suddenly Taro threw her hands from him, with a gesture of sheer despair and exhausted patience.
“I can learn nothing from her, nothing,” he said in English. Then he turned on her again. “Listen,” he said: “You are my mother, and as such I honor you, but you must not deceive me. I know all; know that my sister was married to an American; know how she was married, if you call such marriage. They do not consider it so, as you must know. What do you know of this, my mother? It could not have happened without your knowledge?”
The mother broke down at last. All was indeed lost if he knew that much. She sank in a heap at his feet, and again the other man was reminded of her daughter.
Taro raised her, not ungently, curbing his emotions.
“Pray speak to me the truth,” he implored.
“It was for you,” she said, faintly, in Japanese. “I desired it, I, your mother; and, afterwards, she also, she, your sister. It was a small sacrifice, my son.”
“Sacrifice! What do you mean?” he cried.
“Alas, we had not the money to keep you at the American school, and later, when you desired to return, it was still harder.”
“Oh, my God!”
She went on, speaking brokenly in Japanese. After he had gone to America their little fortune had been swept away, but of this they had kept him in ignorance, fearing that he would not remain in the university did he know how poor they had become. The house belonged to him; they could not sell it. There had been but poor crops in their few remaining acres of rice-fields; their income became smaller and smaller. One by one their servants and coolies had to be sacrificed, till there were only a very few left, and these refused to be paid for their services. They had secured money in what manner they could, and sent it to him. It was hard, but they loved him.
Then Yuki, unknown to her mother, had gone up to Tokyo each day and learned the arts of the geisha; later she invented dances and songs of her own, and soon she was able to command a good price at one of the chief tea-gardens in Tokyo.
This for a season had brought them in a fair income, and for a time they were enabled to send him even more than the usual allowance. Then came his request for his passage money. Alas! they were but weak and silly women. They had forgotten to save against this event in their desire to keep him in comfort. Nakodas had approached Yuki, and tempting offers were made to her. She had resisted all of them, for she was then below the age when girls usually marry, but sixteen years of age. Only when it became imperative to raise the passage money would she even listen to the persuasion of her mother and of the nakoda. They had pointed out to her the great advantage, and finally, as the brother’s letters grew more insistent, she had broken down and given in. After that time she had assisted them in their efforts to secure her a suitable husband. They had been exceptionally successful, for she had married a foreigner who would likely leave her soon, which was fortunate in Omatsu’s mind, one whose excellent virtues and whose wealth were above question. This was all there was to tell. She prayed and besought her honorable son’s pardon.
During her recital Taro had leaned towards her, listening with bated breath to every word that escaped her lips. His thin, nervous face was horribly drawn, his hands were clinched tightly at his side, his whole form was quivering. He tried to regain his scattered senses, and his hand vaguely wandered to his brow, pushing back the thick black hair that had fallen over it.
“You cannot understand,” he said to the other man, his voice scarcely recognizable for its labor. “It was for me, me, my little sister sold herself. To keep me in comfort and ease! Snowflake for me! And they kept me in ignorance. I did not even dream they were in straitened circumstances. Oh, had I not willing hands and an eager heart to work, to slave for them? Why should the whole burden have fallen on her, my little, frail sister? But it has always been so. There is no such thing as justice in this land for the woman.”
Jack heard him raving, understood, and bowed his head in impotent sorrow.
“Has your mother given you any information of her whereabouts?” he suddenly broke in.
Taro had forgotten that they were seeking her. His mother’s story had held all his attention. The horror aroused by that recital of devotion, the thought of the months of her sweet life which she had sacrificed for him, and then how he had repulsed her, pressed on his poor numbed senses. But Jack’s inquiry recalled him. A thousand dark surmises regarding her overwhelmed him.
“Yes, yes—where is she?” he asked, huskily.
She had been with her husband some days now. Madam Omatsu expected her home soon, and this time she would never again return to him.
Taro’s eyes were inflamed. “And she has not returned? She should be here now! Ah, it is plain to be seen what has happened. She may be taking her life at this moment. It is what a Japanese girl would do. She had the blood of heroes in her veins; she would not falter.”
All of a sudden he turned upon his friend. Then the full agony caused by his sister’s disappearance and her great sacrifice descended upon him, and he tottered. Before Jack could stay him, he swayed forward and, as he fell, struck his forehead upon the corner of a heavy chair that had been his father’s. When Jack raised the head of the unconscious man he found blood flowing from a wide cut over the left eye.
There were hurrying feet throughout the house, terrified whispers, and sobs, and, above all, a mother’s voice raised in terrible anguish.