No matter how perplexing and difficult the question may have become, old folks would certainly detest the idea of dragging it on into New Year, the time of all times, and let it darken their life when they were particularly anxious to call in happy auspices. Everything would, therefore, be settled, they reasoned, before the year would be over, at the latest. Shinsuké hugged such hopes and anxiously awaited the dawn of the year which seemed to hold forth so many promises.
The indulgent way of life they pursued daily told on the fund of ten gold pieces that Tsuya had brought from home, and there remained now less than a half of the amount. “You can’t greet New Year with the cheer that five paltry gold pieces can give,” she explained, as she called in the aid of her hair dressing woman, who was secretly charged to trade for money a pair of silver fringed prong-pins wherewith Tsuya had once decked her maidenly hair. And her generosity was maintained; for on the night of the seventeenth, the farm fair, one of the last events of the year, she handed out a present of three small gold pieces to be distributed among the hired hands, as her remembrance of the season.
It was three days after this, at an early hour of the evening, Shinsuké and Tsuya were about to sit at table, when Santa, one of the hired boatmen, came clattering up the stairs. “I have brought good news for you,” he told to Shinsuké. “I have just got a word from our Boss. He is now with your father at the restaurant Kawacho, up the Yanagibashi way. It is going on nicely, he says, and thinks the thing is likely to be settled. So he tells me to get you in a boat and come over there straight away. But he thinks, if two of you came, it might be a bit awkward to carry on the talk. Sorry for the young lady, he says, but he will ask her to stay here.” “A bit of a rest up for your dear man, I say,” he turned to Tsuya. “Evening off once in a blessed while won’t be anybody’s heart-break.”
“But I fear something,—somehow,” Tsuya said, as a sudden change came over her look, sinking in a depressed mood. It was good news, to be true, yet who was to know but things might not take just such a turn that her Shinsuké’s going should be for all time, that he might not be taken away back to his father’s home. Fear seized her; and there were fears that pressed on her mind. Nor was Shinsuké in any better condition of mind. It was for this very moment that he had so longed for, to be sure; yet, brought face to face with it, he felt himself helpless against a series of fears that loomed to cast grim shadows over his mind. What appeared to him the most misgiving part of it all in prospect, was the idea of brazenly dragging himself before his father to ask for his grace, without having obtained the forgiveness of his master against whom he had perpetrated such wrongs as he shuddered to think of. Insistently pressed on by Santa who kept saying, “Hurry, as fast as we can make it!”, the young man but briefly fitted himself up and went down the stairs concealing within him a leaden heart.
Almost in the same moment, Tsuya was in his tracks and at his heels, for what reason she knew best. Just as the two men were about to step into the boat, she caught them by their sleeves.
“Santa san,” she spoke to the boatman, “no offence to you, I assure you, but I can’t feel—somehow—things are just right. Take me along, too, I pray you. You will never get into trouble on my account—I’ll see you don’t!”
“Aha, ha! What should I hear but this stuff and nonsense, young lady?” Santa, who had regardlessly sprung into the wherry, guffawed, even as he began to untie the fastening rope. “You’re at the tricks of a spoilt child,—but you sure don’t mean it! No trouble for me or anything, I tell you; but what is all this fuss for? As if somebody were going to gobble him up! Just leave it to my Boss, and everything will be all right. You ought to see—I know, you do see—that your going there would simply mean poking a stick in the wheel—when it’s going on famously, too!”
“If it has to be that way, I could keep myself in some other room and wait while the talking goes on. So, don’t go without me, for goodness’ sake! I don’t know why, but I do feel that I shouldn’t let him go alone, to-night.”—She nimbly took a small gold piece out of her sash folds.
“It’s not every day that I ask you to do such a thing for me, Santa san,” Tsuya said, furtively offering the money up to the boatman’s palm. “Once in a while, you might do me a good turn,—now!”
“It’s only the other day you gave me a good piece,—no, you’re too free of giving, and my Boss wouldn’t like it.” After a moment of his unwonted indecision in such matter, he handed the proffered money back to her. To this young boatman, seemingly the most important one amongst Seiji’s hired hands, Tsuya had been most generous; of him she had been most considerate. What seemed to be his stony attitude just when she stood so badly in need of his help, was, therefore, all the more wounding.