V In Which the East and the West Are United
A few days later they were married. It was a very quiet little tea-drinking ceremony, and, unlike the usual Japanese wedding, there was not the painful crowd of relatives and friends attendant. In fact, no one was present, besides themselves, save Jack’s man and maid and the nakoda, while Yuki herself sang the marriage song.
They started housekeeping in an ideal spot. Their house, a bit of art in itself, was built on the crest of a small hill. On all sides sloped and leaned green highlands, rich in foliage and warm in color. Beyond these smaller hillocks towered the jagged background of mountain-peaks, with the halo of the skies bathing them in an eternal glow. A lazy, babbling little stream dipped and threaded its way between the hillocks, mirroring on its shining surface the beauty of the neighboring hills and the inimitable landscapes pictured on the canvas of God—the skies—and seeming like a twisted rainbow of ever-changing and brilliant colors. But no surges disturbed its waters, even far beyond where it emptied into the mellow Bay of Tokyo.
From their elevation on the hill they could see below them the beautiful city of Tokyo, with its many-colored lights and intricate maze of streets. And all about them the hills, the meadows, the valleys and forests bore eloquent testimony to the labor of the Color Queen.
Pink, white, and blushy-red twigs of cherry and plum blossoms, idly swaying, flung out their suave fragrance on the flattered breeze, the volatile handmaid of young May, who had freed all the imprisoned perfumes, unhindered by the cynic snarl of the jealous winter, and with silent, pursuasive wooing had taught the dewy-tinctured air to please all living nostrils. So from the glowing and thrilling thoughts that tremble on the young tree of life is love distilled and, unmindful of the assembling of the baffled powers of cold caution and warning fear, the heart is filled with fountain tumults it cannot dissemble.
Jack Bigelow was fascinated and bewildered at the turn events had taken. He was very good and gentle to her, and for several days after the ceremony she seemed quite happy and contented. Then she disappeared, and for a week he saw nothing of her.
He greatly missed her—his little bride of three or four days. He longed ardently for her return, and her absence alarmed him. Her little arts and witcheries had grown on him even in this short period of their acquaintance.
Towards the end of the week she slipped into the house quietly, and went about her household duties as though nothing unusual had occurred. She did not offer to tell him where she had been, and he felt strangely unwilling to force her confidence.
Instead of becoming better acquainted with her, each day found him more puzzled and less capable of knowing or understanding her. Now she was clinging, artless, confiding, and again shrewd and elfish. Now she was laughing and singing and dancing as giddily as a little child, and again he could have sworn she had been weeping, though she would deny it stoutly, and pooh-pooh and laugh away such an idea.
He asked her one day how she would like to be dressed in American clothes. She mimicked him. She mimicked everything and every one, from the warbling of the birds to the little man and maid who waited on them.
“I loog lige this,” she said, and humped a bustle under her ridiculously tight omeshi, and slipped his large sun hat over her face. Then she laughed out at him, and flung her arms tightly about his neck.
“You wan’ me be American girl?”
“You are a witch, Yuki-san,” he said.
“I wan’ new dress,” she returned, promptly, and held a pink little palm out. He frowned. He almost disliked her when she spoke of money. He filled her hands, however, with change from his pockets, and when she broke away from him, which she did as soon as she had obtained the money, he wanted to take it back. Her pretty laughter sifted out to him through the shoji at the other side, and he knew she was mocking him again.
“It is her natural love of dress and finery,” he told himself. “It is the eternal feminine in her, and it is bewitching.”
The next day, as she sat opposite to him, eating her infinitesimal bit of a breakfast—a plum, a small fish, and a tiny cup of tea—all on a little black lacquer tray, he announced mysteriously that he was going “on business” to the city.
She desired to accompany him, as became a dutiful wife.
No, he told her, that was impossible. His mission was of a secret nature, which could not be divulged until his return.
Then she insisted that she would follow behind him after the manner of a slave; and when he laughed at her, she begged quite humbly and gently that he would condescend to honorably permit her to go with him, and then he was for telling her his whole pretty story, and the surprise he had concocted to please her, when she grew capricious and insisted that she would not stir one little bit of an inch from the house, and that he must go all alone to the city and attend to his great, magnificent business!
He went down to Tokyo, and in his boyish, blundering fashion he purchased silk and crépe and linen sufficient for fifty gowns for her.
She thanked him extravagantly. She could not imagine what she would do with so much finery. Her honorable person was augustly insignificant, and could not accommodate so much merchandise.
“Now,” he thought with inward satisfaction, “that ghost of a money question will be laid. She has everything she wants and shall have. I want to do for her, and give her things without being wheedled into it. It is that which irritates me.”
But a few days later she came to him breathless and flustered. Lo! some one had stolen all the beautiful goods he had bought her. It was neither their man nor maid. No, no! that was altogether impossible. They were honest, simple folk, who feared the gods. But they were all quite gone—where she could not say. Who had taken them, she could not guess. Perhaps she, her unworthy self, and he, his honorable augustness, had been extremely wicked in their former state, and the gods were now punishing them in their present life. It would be wicked and unavailing to attempt to search for the missing goods. It was the will of the gods. Maybe the gods had been offended at such ruthless extravagance. Ah, yes, that was a better solution of the theft. Of course the gods were angry. What gods would not be? It was sinful to buy so many things at once.
She affected great distress over the loss, and her husband, somewhat bewildered at her elaborate apologies for the thief who had stolen them, tried to comfort her by saying he would buy her double the quantity again, whereat she became very solemn.
“No, no,” she said. “Bedder give me money to buy. I will purchase jus’ liddle bit each time—to please the gods.”