The father was imperious and lordly. A man of samurai birth, he had been one of the first to take advantage of the change in government and go immediately into trade, thus placing behind him all the traditions of caste. In Tokyo he had acquired an enormous fortune. He had a partnership there in a European store. He had purchased much of the land in the region of Sendai, and the townspeople looked with some apprehensions upon his steady advance, knowing that wherever he set his heel the land was despoiled of beauty.
Sendai in these latter years had become quite a bustling commercial city, and all because of Yamashiro’s enterprise. In ten years he had altered the little coast town’s exclusive policy. Thus the townspeople came to believe that Sendai could no longer remain a secluded place of abode, but would become an ugly, commercial centre, a stamping-ground for tradespeople, and in time an open port for the barbarians. In the face of the dissatisfaction of his townspeople Yamashiro steadily kept to his march of progress. Realizing that he could never have the affection of his neighbors, he openly tried to play the despot over them.
A plastic little pupil was his wife, the typical Japanese matron, who, bowing to the will of her lord in all things, scarcely ever spoke save to echo his words, and who lived but for his pleasure and comfort.
The boy Yoshida was like his father, save that he spent his restlessness upon the pleasures of youth. Having no occasion to work, and being provided with an unlimited supply of money, Yoshida frittered his way through life with the idle and rich young men of Sendai, leisurely inventing amusements for themselves, seeking and chasing every butterfly. Not a geisha of Sendai but knew the gallant Yoshida.
Then, mothlike, with a daintier and as gay a fluttering of wings as the geishas, Hyacinth had crossed his path. Aoi had moved her home about this time from the little village on the shore of the bay to the city proper. This occurred after Komazawa’s English lawsuit had been settled, so that the family were now living in more affluent circumstances.
Actually abandoning his geishas, Yoshida, to the envy of the town’s young belles and beauties, offered himself to the daughter of Madame Aoi, the girl whose eyes did not slant in shape, and yet which had a trick of closing half-way and then glancing out sideways. It was as if Hyacinth, with her wide eyes, had unconsciously fallen into the habit of copying nature, where all eyes about her were narrow and seemingly half closed.
On this day Yoshida and his parents brought gifts for Aoi and her daughter; gorgeous gifts they were and very costly. The girl, quite forgetful of the presence of the watchful parents of her lover, threw all her manners to the winds when she beheld the exquisite obi her father-in-law-elect had brought her from Tokyo. Out of the room she slipped, to return in the space of a few minutes, fluttering in through the sliding-doors like a bird of gay plumage, her eyes brighter, her cheeks and lips rosier than the red gold obi twisted so entrancingly about her slender waist.
Yet in her brief absence the Yamashiro family had exchanged significant glances and commented upon her rude actions.
“Your worthy daughter, Madame Aoi,” said Yamashiro, the elder, “should be placed under the care of a severe governess.”
Aoi looked appealingly from the displeased face of Yamashiro to his wife. The latter sat still as an image, her small vermilion-tipped lips closely sealed together like those of a doll.