“I.”
“But,” she gasped, “she has deceived you more than anyone else. Exalted Matsuda, she has forced you to break the oath you made to possess her. She is married forever to the foreign devil.”
“It is news,” said Matsuda coldly, “that the foreign devils marry Japanese girls forever.” He went a step nearer to the woman and brought his eyes on a level with hers. “She is not married to him, Madame Yamada. He will leave her soon—remember my words. After that—there is time then for the fulfilment of my oath.”
Madame Yamada, left alone, grew repulsive in aspect. Her powdered face was white and long drawn. She had thrust her hands mechanically through her hair and it stood up from her head in stiff disorder. In the hope of securing Matsuda for her own daughter she had herself assisted in putting the girl she hated beyond her reach. Now she realized how utterly vain was this last hope. Her very action but brought upon her head the implacable enmity of the man himself, who she knew was not deceived in her. The gods alone knew to what extent he would carry his malicious vengeance upon her.
CHAPTER VIII
Meanwhile Matsuda sent the articles he had purchased in Tokyo as marriage gifts to the most respected and honorable foreigner, Mr. Verley. The latter was actually pleased and touched. He laughed at Azalea’s first impulse of fear when the presents had arrived and reminded her that these were the only wedding gifts they had received. She, after her temporary fear, fell to admiring the beauty of the gifts. By the time Matsuda came to pay his personal respects to the couple, only the remotest suspicion of design on his part remained in her mind. No one could have been more respectful and humble in attitude than the rich Matsuda to the foreign minister, no one more solicitous for their comfort and happiness. The little mission house and its pastor found a sudden, unexpected patron, for Sunday after Sunday the chief man of Sanyu attended the services. Matsuda became a “pillar of the church.” First he won the confidence of the minister, and later made the acquaintance of other and more powerful foreigners in the larger cities of Japan.
The recall of the missionary came like a shock in the midst of their happiness. Azalea, by this time, had learned and seemingly understood the religion of her husband. She had accepted it even before she understood it with a meek faith almost sublime. Yet, in spite of her seeming conversion, and her almost idolatrous love for her husband, there had curiously enough remained always with Azalea that small stubborn feeling of terror of the far-away “land of the barbarians” which constituted the home of her husband. All the joyful searching with her husband as teacher in the books of his people had failed to cure her of this innate sense of fear of the foreigner, a fear inculcated since childhood, when she had listened to the weird and horrible tales of an old grandfather who had once lived in one of the open ports and whose imagination was livelier than his memory. These vivid tales of horror, added to an occasional visit to the town of foreign sailor men, whose shore conduct was not that of superior beings, and the further assurance of the temple priests that these barbarians were evil—all these impressions were deeply enough implanted in the nature of Azalea, who had never wholly outgrown her child-nature. Just as a Caucasian child might shrink in fear at the thought of suddenly being taken from his safe little cot and transplanted among the savage tribes of Africa, so the little Japanese girl dreaded the thought of life in the questionable and unknown land of America. And now, when she had come to the years of womanhood, a thrill of that early fear still remained with her. Hence when her husband told her of his recall Azalea was quite stupefied.
“You are going to leave me!” she gasped, her eyes wide with terror.
“Leave you!” he repeated. “Why, what put such an idea as that into your head? You are going with me.”