Now the nonchalant gardeners crossed her path, making respectful salutation in transit. Her eyes followed them absently, but all at once became glued to a small sagging point in the left sleeve of the shorter man. As they disappeared around the corner plum-tree, she sank to one of the rocks. As if she had not enough to bear already, without the torture of speculation on the purport of those written words she was never to see! Her hands fell limp, her head sank. The gray shawl crept by unnoticed inches to the earth.
Wearily the girl opened the portals of her thought to the same hopeless throng of shrouded visitors,—conjectures, all of them, moving solemnly one behind the other,—creatures without a face,—half-animate forms with no clear direction or purpose except to move on. What was to be the end of it all, for her? There was no answer to that. Tetsujo apparently would neither disown her nor relinquish his determination to marry her quickly. It did not seem much to ask, only to be let alone; and yet in some strange way this had come to be a priceless, impossible boon. Pierre's note she would never see. She had not been able to answer his Carmen song. One way alone remained open for communication, and that was Gwendolen's telegram. She had faith that, in some way, this would get to her. At the cry, "Dempo!" she had determined to rush out in person and demand it. Even though this succeeded, she could not fix great hope on its content. Surely no thought would come to Pierre but the old loving, desperate, appealing cry, "Be true, be faithful, and we may yet find happiness!" How the foreigners harped upon that thought of personal happiness! It was, to most of them, the one definite aim in life. To Pierre—dear, beautiful, joyous Pierre—it was life itself. A Japanese is taught from childhood to look upon happiness as the casual flower of his evergreen garden,—the lotos on a still pond of duty. It is never an incentive, never in itself a conscious reward. She had tried to teach Pierre this, but he had laughed at her, and said it was because Japanese did not know how to love.
Yuki fixed thoughtful eyes on a small shrivelled tuft of fern near her feet. Its once graceful fronds were cruelly bruised and twisted, first by frost, and now by this pitiless storm. "I know how it feels," thought Yuki. "My father's harshness, my mother's suffering, and my own desire to be faithful have so wrung and bruised my heart." After a pause she said aloud, "I wonder if it thinks itself really dead?" She stooped down slowly, and parted the sodden, clinging scraps of brown. In the heart a nest of tiny leaflets curled, like baby glow-worms, close wrapped in silky filaments of down. They seemed to shrink from her icy fingers, as if to say: "Let us be still! We are only asleep. Those tattered brown bed-curtains keep us warm."
Yuki stood upright again. The expression of her face was altered, and her eyes now slowly softened into tears. "My poor Pierre! my poor Pierre!" she whispered. "If he were just a little more noble, if he were a Japanese, he would say, 'It is best that you should obey your parents, and serve at once your native land.' But he will not say it! And I have promised!" She leaned over for another moment, heaping the dead fern-leaves above their sleeping youth, then walked slowly to the house.
One star, at least, shone clear in her troubled firmament. If Pierre should, through Gwendolen's intercession, or through some awakened vision of his own, telegraph, urging her to be true to her better self, no matter what the grief to her plighted love,—then she could wish to marry that great man, Haganè, to pay her filial debt to the now stricken parents, to show her love and loyalty to Nippon! Of course there was no hope that Pierre would do this; but if he should,—if he should—!
The wind came again and again, but never so terribly as for that one moment by the pond. Ordinary sounds of domestic life arose from the Onda household, and from the neighbors around it. Cocks began to crow, as if the storm-clearing was of their own contrivance; sparrows chirped. The white tailless cat picked a dainty way along the outer edges of bamboo gutters. Cries of belated peddlers came cheerily from the street.
"To-o-fu-u! To-o-fu-u-u!" called the bean-curd man, with his characteristic upward inflection on the last syllable.
"Chi-chee! Ichiban chi-chee!" cried the milk-peddler, trotting between the shafts of his small, closed cart. He was very proud of this cart, and because of it considered himself the most aristocratic kitchen-visitor on the hill. Its color was a loud, blasphemous blue. On the sides, in letters of yellow edged with black, were two inscriptions. The first, in Chinese ideographs, announced prompt delivery of the richest and freshest milk. Below it, in English, glowed the startling line, "Fresh Ox-Milk Every Hours." Suzumè had long been a patron of the blue cart. A little thin-necked milk-bottle dangled, now empty, by a bit of white cord, just without the gate. This the milk-boy removed, substituting one that was full, though equally stopperless.
The soba-ya (buckwheat-man), lurching and skimming along under a bent kiri-wood pole that bore at one end a chest of drawers and at the other a steaming furnace with bowls, copper-pots, and a ladle, naturally had little voice left for vociferous proclamation. His coming was indicated, at long range, by the click and shiver of copper drawer-handles beating in unison against half-filled boxes. According to the quantity of dry buckwheat in each drawer, the handle uttered a different note. Needless to say, this burdened hawker loitered long at each gate; but at the Onda entrance he stayed longest of all. It was Maru's happy privilege to bargain with these several venders. Her heart found an answering thump and shiver as the soba-ya drew near.
"Honorably steamed, or augustly raw, O maiden of the lovely countenance?" asked he of the blushing one.