“Sir doctor,” he said, in a voice new even to his mother, it was so strong and haughty, “you make mistake. The child is already among its own people. Here, in my father’s house, all people are Engleesh. So! The child belongs to us, since the mother did present it to us. It is a gift of the good God!”
Smiling and frowning together the little doctor bowed ironically to the little fellow facing him.
“And will the august one enlighten me as to whether he will make an effort to find the child’s legal guardians?”
“That is our affair, sir doctor, but I will answer. We will ask advice of the good excellency when he returns. He is in Sendai even now. He will be in our village to-night.”
The doctor bowed himself out, and Koma turned to his mother, a question in his eyes. Aoi nodded sadly. The poor white woman would die, had said the sir doctor.
Komazawa approached the bed softly, until he stood by the woman’s side, looking down fixedly upon her. How white was the still face, how beautiful the long lashes that swept the cheeks, how wonderful and sunlike the silken hair enveloping her head like a halo. Could she be real, this beautiful, still creature? Never had Komazawa seen anything like her. She seemed a spirit of the lingering twilight.
Suddenly he bent over her and softly touched the small hand that lay outside the coverlet. But soft as was his touch it acted like an electric shock upon the woman. She started and quivered, as her heavy lids lifted. At the little face bending above her she stared. A strange expression came into her face. Her voice was like that of one murmuring in a dream.
“A little white boy,” she said. “A little white—”
Her lips were stilled, but a breath, a sigh passed from her as Koma, with a sudden instinctive motion, put his face down to hers. When Aoi gently drew the boy up she found the still, white face softly smiling in the twilight, as though ere she slept she had seen a vision.
But Komazawa knelt by the bedside, weeping passionately.