The first glance at the envelope sent a queer sensation of coldness through his heart, as if he had suddenly been struck chill. The writing was strange. The delicate characters of O-Mitsu, beautiful as the work of a famous artist, were replaced by the strong, heavy, brush strokes of an angry man. For an instant he stared at them with mind a blank. Then he knew. Someone had found them out. He stood as if paralyzed by shock, nerveless, inert, expecting some dire calamity. Then he tore open the envelope.
A single glance was sufficient to tell the story. The signature was the first thing his eye caught, and after that he could hardly see the other words. Those two dominated everything—“Kudo Jukichi”—her father! The new-clothed dignity of the law that made him a Commoner slipped from him like a kimono unfastened; the honor of his new service, the pride of his regimental assignment faded away, and he was again the Eta of the old days, outcast, despised, a very pollution. All that he had done, all that his father had done, the position they had won in the community, the consideration of their fellows were made as nothing by the simple apparition of those two words.
But after a little the old inborn pride of race came back to him and he straightened up like a new man. He was one of whom the Emperor had deigned to think; what should he care what others said? What mattered it after all that her father had learned their secret? Nothing but that was changed, and sooner or later that must have come. He had done no wrong. He was not changed. The law that had given him citizenship was still the law. The Emperor’s care was over him. It was his Sovereign’s wish that he was what he was. He took new heart and began to read the letter. His brain was cooler now. In the mental numbness that followed the first shock he had felt only a vague terror of the fury of Kudo. But as he read, the words that had seemed so awful in anticipation lost some of their dreaded force. The wild outburst of rage was not there, but in its place a cool, fine sarcasm that cut as if the Samurai who wrote had wielded his sword instead.
A curious calm possessed him as he finished the letter. The haughty pride of the Samurai, his bitter contempt for the “outcast” who dared presume to think of his daughter, his jeers at the “upstart trader” had lost their sting. It was a soldier of the Empire, a man of the Guards, who folded the letter and replaced it in its envelope. With a smiling face he met his father and mother and sat down to supper.
After the meal, when the pipes were brought out, he handed the letter to his father to read. It might as well be told now. His poor little secret, stripped of its veil, seemed very small and miserable. But he was going away to-morrow, and unknown to-morrow might do what it would with him. He listened unmoved while Chobei slowly read aloud the bitter, mocking words of the man for whom he had done so much. O-Koyo covered her face with her kimono sleeves and wept openly; but father and son sat with steady features and gave no sign, save that when the reading was ended the Commoner laid his strong arm across his son’s shoulder in shy, unaccustomed caress, and said:
“My son! My son!” No more.
