Uchida justified, many times over, her belief in him. In the district near the Kano home he rented, in Tatsu's name, a small cottage, paying for it by the month, in advance. With Mata's assistance, not to mention a small colony of hirelings, the floors were fitted with new mats, the woodwork of the walls, the posts, and veranda floors polished to a mirror-like brightness, and even the tiny garden set with new turf and flowering plants. Tatsu was lured down from the mountain side and persuaded to remain at night and part, at least, of each day, in this little haven of coming joy.
A secluded room was fitted up as a studio, for his sole use. Here were great rectangles of paper, rolls of thin silk, stretching frames, water holders, multitudinous brushes, and all the exquisite pigment that Japanese love of beauty has drawn from water, earth, and air; delicate infusions of sea-moss, roots, and leaves, saucers of warm earth ground to a paste, precious vessels of powdered malachite, porphyry, and lapis lazuli. But the boy looked askance upon the expensive outlay. His wild nature resented so obvious a lure. It seemed unworthy of a Dragon Painter to accept this multitude of material devices. He had painted on flakes of inner bark, still quivering with the life from which he had rudely torn them. Visions limned on rock and sand had been the more precious for their impermanence. Here, every stroke was to be recorded, each passing whim and mood registered, as in a book of fate.
For days the little workroom remained immaculate. Kano began to fret. Ando Uchida, the wise, said, "Wait." It was Mata who finally precipitated the crisis. One rainy morning, being already in an ill humor over some trifling household affair, she was startled and annoyed by the sudden vision of Tatsu's head thrust noiselessly into her kitchen. Rudely she had slammed the shoji together, calling out to him that he had better be off doing the one thing he was fit to do, rather than to be skulking around her special domain. Tatsu had, as rudely, reopened the shoji panels, tearing a large hole in the translucent paper. "He had come merely for a glimpse of the Dragon Maid," he told the angry dame. "In a few days more she was to be his wife, and this maddening convention of keeping him always from her was eating out his vitals with red fire," so declared Tatsu, and let the consuming passion blaze in his sunken eyes.
But Mata, undismayed, stood up in scornful silence. She was gathering herself together like a storm, and in an instant more had hurled upon him the full terror of her vocabulary. She called him a barbarian, a mountain goat,—a Tengu,—better mated to a fox spirit or a she-demon than to a decent girl like her young mistress. She denounced her erstwhile beloved master as a blind old dotard, and the idolized Umè, she declared a weak and yielding idiot. Tatsu's attempts at retort were swept away with a hiss. For a while he raged like a flame upon the doorstep, but he was no match for his vigorous opponent. It was something to realize his own defeat. Gasping, he turned to the friendly rain and would have darted from the gate when, with a swoop like a falcon, Mata was bodily upon him. He threw his right arm upward as if to escape a blow, but the old dame did not belabor him. She was trying to thrust something hard and strange into his other hand. He glanced toward it. The last indignity of an umbrella! "Open it, madman!" she cried shrilly after him, "and hold your robe up; it is one of your new silk ones!"
Tatsu had never used an umbrella in his life. Now he opened it eagerly. Anything to escape that frightful voice! In the windy street he clutched at his fluttering skirts as he had seen other men do, and, with a last terrified backward glance, ran breathlessly toward the haven of his temporary home.
The little house was empty. Tatsu was thankful for so much. The rooms were already pre-haunted by dreams of Umè-ko. Tatsu felt the peace of it sink deep into his soul. Instinctively his wandering feet led him into the little painting room. As usual, the elaborate display of artist materials chilled him. After his recent exasperation he longed to ease his heart of a sketch, but obstinacy held him back. He sat down in the centre of the space. A bevy of small, squeaking sounds seemed to enclose him. It took him some moments to recognize them as the irritating rustling of his silken dress. He sprang to his feet, tore off the new and expensive girdle of brocade, flung it into one corner and the offending robe into another, and remained standing in the centre of the small space clad only in his short white linen under-robe.
He looked about, now, for a more congenial sheathing. If he could but find the tattered blue kimono worn during that upward journey from Kiu Shiu! Stained by berries and green leaves, torn by a thousand graceful vines,—for laundering only a few vigorous swirls in a running stream with a quick sun-drying on the river stones,—yet how comfortable, how companionable it was! There had been a blue something folded on the shelf of his closet. He found it, opened it wide in the air and would have uttered a cry of joy but for the changed look of it. Even this had not escaped Mata's desecrating hands! It was mended everywhere. The white darning threads grinned at him like teeth. Also it was washed and ironed, and smelled of foreign soap. For an instant he tore at it angrily, and was minded to destroy it, but the sense of familiarity held him. He wrapped it about him slowly and, with bent head, again seated himself upon the floor.
The rain now fell in quivering wires of dull light. The world was strung with them like a harp, and upon them the wind played a monotonous refrain. Against the wall near Tatsu stood a light framework of wood with the silk already stretched and dried for painting. At his other hand a brush slanted sidewise from a bowl of liquid ink. The boy's pulses leaped toward these things even while his lips curled in disdain at the shallow decoy. "So they expect to trap me, these geese and jailers who have temporary dominance over my life," thought he, in scorn. No, even though he now desired it of himself, he would not paint! Let him but gain his bride—then nothing should have power to sting or fret him. But, oh, these endless days and hours of waiting! They corroded his very thought as acid corrodes new metal. He felt the eating of it now.
A spasm of pain and anger distorted his face. He gave a cry, caught up suddenly the thick hake brush, and hurled it across the room toward the upright frame of silk. It struck the surface midway, a little to the left; pressed and worked against it as though held by a ghost, and then, falling, dragged lessening echoes of stain.
Tatsu's mirthless laugh rang out against the sound of dripping rain. The childish outburst had been of some relief. He looked defiantly toward the white rectangle he had just defaced. Defaced? The boy caught in his breath. He thrust his head forward, leaning on one hand to stare. That bold and unpremeditated stroke had become a shadowed peak; the trailing marks of ink a splendid slope. Had he not seen just such a one in Kiu Shiu,—had he not scaled it, crying aloud upon its summit to the gods to yield him there his bride?