With profoundest salute Kutami acknowledged the compliment and protested his unworthiness.
“There is very much to do,” he said slowly, “and I am poorly fitted to make suggestions. I hope you will not believe me rude or unthinking if I venture to tell you it has been suggested to me that perhaps you yourself would be willing to help.”
The trial was made, and Kutami sat with narrowing eyes, watching his visitor to note the effect. For a moment or two Jukichi sat perfectly still, with face completely masking his feelings. Then he bowed deeply, with strong sibilant inspiration.
“I?” he said, with show of surprise. “It is an unexpected honor. I am quite unworthy to assist in so valuable a work. I do not know what I could do.”
The Commoner breathed more freely. He had dreaded a fiery outburst from the hot-tempered old man, and when it did not come he could hardly conceal his relief. He felt that Jukichi’s coöperation was more than half promised when it was not at once indignantly refused.
“Who in the city could do more?” he exclaimed. “Who could confer such honor upon so humble an undertaking?”
Jukichi did not reply. Since the day when he saw the struggle for the Restoration successful, the old man, still clinging fondly to the life of the old régime, had been nevertheless drifting unconsciously toward participation in the new. But he was yet far from open avowal, and the proposition of Kutami came to him with a shock. He saw, however, that he had opened the way for it himself, and merely asked to be excused from giving immediate reply. Then with renewed congratulations and polite expression of good-will, he went away, leaving the Commoner uncertain but hopeful.
With genuine sorrow Kutami saw the Samurai pass through his gate unpledged. But he went on with the work, and soon the new building approached completion. Every detail was arranged but the most important of all. For Jukichi still declined to commit himself. If he failed to secure the Samurai, though he succeeded in all else, Kutami felt that the whole undertaking would fail. But he exhausted his ingenuity without success. The pride of his abolished caste still dominated the Samurai. It was an incident beyond the knowledge of either that determined Jukichi.
Jealousy is not the curse of race or rank. It finds its lodgment in the breasts of rich and poor alike, in Occidental and Oriental. It was O-Koyo who found the first evidence of it in a newspaper wrapped around a casual purchase, and with unconcealed emotion took it to her husband, reviling herself for being the bearer of ill news. Poor Kutami! Of all the hard thrusts and unkind blows of his none too easy life this was the meanest and worst. It was a savage attack on his cherished scheme. The school plan had been devised in all sincerity, with the sole purpose of giving aid, without its being known, to the man who, he felt, had honored him by entering his house, and whom he greatly admired. But here he saw his honest, manly work scornfully derided, his simple purpose wantonly distorted and himself held up to ridicule more bitter than his bitterest outcast days had ever known. Every one could see what the real object of the new school was, said the paper. The spawn of the frog was hoping to be hatched out into eagles. But fine dress and large words did not hide the outcast. The Eta, though he clothed an army and built a thousand schools, was only an Eta. Law might call him a Commoner; it could not make him clean. Contamination was in all that he touched. Out upon the upstart with his vile wealth, who dared presume to offer schooling to the sons of men of birth!
With heart too heavy for words Kutami gave back the paper to his wife. The cruel blow seemed to have struck down at once his ambition and his energy. He sat like one paralyzed and could neither think nor speak. And O-Koyo, tearing up the wretched paper in a frenzy of grief, as if thus to destroy the slander, threw herself down on the mat and sobbed aloud.