THE LADY OF THE SCROLL

Kintaro Yamazaki was sitting in his little upper room with a letter spread out on the floor in front of him, thinking. He was thinking so hard that his brows were wrinkled, his thick black hair stood up straight on his head, and his eyes, fixed on vacancy, were closed to two narrow black lines in his handsome, smooth, young face.

The thought did not seem to come to any result, for soon, with a sigh, he wrenched himself away from it, reached out for the little tea tray that stood beside him, filled up the pot from the kettle that steamed over the _hibachi_, and sipped his tea from a small cup with much gusto. His face lightened with the cheering draught, and he said aloud, perhaps by way of strengthening his own resolution, “I will ask them to wait. Surely they might let me finish my studies first!”

A step sounded on the ladder-like stair-way that led to his room. There was a rustling of garments in the passage, and a meek voice cried out:--

“Excuse the trouble I am making you.”

Kintaro made no move from his place. He knew it was his landlady’s daughter coming to see whether he had tea and water and charcoal enough. He only shouted rather gruffly, for his mind was still on his letter, “Come!” and plunged again into thought. The sliding paper screen was pushed gently open, just wide enough to admit the frowzy head and broad face of O Matsu.

“Excuse the trouble I am making you,” she said again, in a small, humble voice, and bowed to the matted floor.

“Come in!” he answered, less gruffly, and the girl hitched meekly in on her knees, pulled in the charcoal basket, the tea caddy, the cold water pot, and a long, narrow bundle, and bowed once more.

“The postman brought this for you,” she said, as she bowed again, pushing the bundle toward him with grimy fingers.

A trace of curiosity lighted Kintaro’s narrow black eyes, but the girl did not observe it, as he nodded stiffly and left it lying. She knew as well as he that a large package by mail was an excitement in his life, and she would have liked to stay and watch him open it; but he made no move, so she busied herself for a few moments with her work and crept humbly from the room, to lie in wait outside the door and listen.

Kintaro was an art student in Tokyo, and after three or four years of hard study and much practice he was beginning to acquire some little reputation. He had come from his country home in the north with the idea that he would be a great artist. He had made his way into the studio of one of the foremost painters of the day; and had cooked, washed dishes, run errands, swept, mixed colors, cleaned brushes, and acted as servant apprentice, until his good temper, perseverance, and real talent had procured for him the interest and careful attention of his master. Little by little he had learned the secrets of art, the firm, bold strokes, the wonderful blending of colors that had made his master famous, and now he was taking a last year in the art school of the Imperial University before going back to his home. He was an only son, and his parents missed him sorely. He was given what seemed to them an ample allowance, but what was, in the extravagant modern Tokyo, a mere pittance, with which, for this last year, he could only rent a small room in a poor street, and live in the cheapest manner. The little daughter of the house, who answered his summons when he clapped his hands, was a thorn in his flesh. She was always grimy and disheveled; her dress was usually badly disarranged; she was curious about him and his belongings; and once when he came home at an unexpected hour, he found her pawing over his sketches with dirty fingers. It was the instinct of self-defense that led him to sit unmoved and without interest in his bundle while she puttered about her work, and the same instinct that led him to recall her after her exit from the room and send her out into the street for a package of cigarettes of an unusual brand. He knew it would take her ten or fifteen minutes to find them, and that in that time he could satisfy his curiosity without appeasing hers.

With a sigh of relief he heard her bare feet slipping down the steep, polished stairs, and then the clatter of her clogs as she hastened out to make the purchase. He leaned forward and took up the bundle.

“From Noguchi,” he said, as he read the superscription. “What in the world is he sending me? I didn’t even know he was back from China yet.”

He untied the strings and unwrapped the paper as he spoke, laying bare a plain wooden box, tied about the middle with a heavy cord of red silk. Kintaro’s hand trembled with eagerness as he opened the box, unrolled the yellow cotton in which its contents were wrapped, and carefully took out a scroll tied with silken bands. Very tenderly he unrolled it, until at last it lay at full length on the mats.

He held his breath with amazement and delight. “What a beauty!” he murmured at last.

It was a picture of a woman, the most beautiful that he had ever seen. The graceful form was dressed in sumptuous trailing garments, the fair, oval face with its crown of raven hair wore an expression of appealing sadness. The lines and coloring were only such as a master can command. The picture was mounted on blue brocade, with carved ivory rollers at each end. As Kintaro leaned over studying it, he heard the clatter of clogs in the courtyard below, and hastily rolling up his treasure, he thrust it into its box, and the box into a cupboard, before the bare feet had reached the top of the stairs.

Humbly the untidy little maid bowed as she presented the package of cigarettes with a murmured apology for her delay in procuring them. Kintaro looked at her with aversion. “Why do they want me to marry?” he thought within himself. “Women are no good. I don’t want them around.”

He got up, seized his hat, and pounded noisily in his stocking-feet down the stairs. He must get out into the streets, among the busy crowds, and forget his thoughts.

For an hour or more he tramped along, so abstracted that he hardly knew where he was going. Once he walked right over a toddling boy, who was as absorbed in kite-flying as Kintaro was in meditation, and had to pick him up and give him a penny to spend on sweets before the urchin would cease his lusty bawling. Once a jinrikisha man tearing along at full speed nearly ran into him, pushing him aside with his outstretched hand just in time to prevent a catastrophe. When he returned to his lodgings, it was dark, and the streets were full of the moving luminous globes that light the jinrikisha men at their evening work.

The little maid met him at the door, bowing low and murmuring “O kaeri!” by way of greeting. He passed up to his room, where a lamp was burning, a tea-kettle bubbling over the fire, and his supper awaiting him on a tray.

O Matsu followed and sat down to watch him as he ate, filling his rice bowl again and again from the covered box at her side. His aversion came over him in full force. How could he marry? Women were disgusting to him. Poor boy! During his years of work in Tokyo he had never spoken to a woman higher in rank and education than his landlady, and to his mind poor little Matsu, with her frowzy hair and grimy fingers, was the type of womanhood.

And now his parents had written him that the question of marriage could no longer be deferred. He was their only son, and his duty required that he raise up grandchildren to do them honor. They wished him to take a wife from his own province and city, and had been thinking of their neighbor’s daughter, O Fumi, who was just seventeen years old, and would make a good daughter-in-law, if all that they could learn of her was true. This they had written to Kintaro in the letter he had received that morning, and it was this that had so disturbed his mind.

O Fumi San,--he remembered her. She was a little girl when he left home,--something of a hoyden, with a slim figure and restless ways. He remembered how fast she could run, with her kimono tucked up to her knees like a peasant girl’s, and her bare brown legs flashing back and forth as fast as a jinrikisha man’s. She used to laugh at him too, for he was always sitting on his heels working away with brush and paper; and she had nicknamed him “Bozu,” pretending to think that he was preparing himself for the priesthood. He had been away from home five years now, and she was seventeen, and his parents wanted him to marry her. Undoubtedly she had grown into a fat, red-cheeked maiden like O Matsu there. He shuddered at the thought, and held out his rice-bowl to be filled with tea, a sign that he had finished his meal.

“O Matsu San, how old are you?” he said, anxious to know the worst about his proposed bride.

O Matsu, in an ecstasy of smiles and bows at this unexpected interest in herself, answered as well as she could in the midst of her prostrations that she was seventeen. Kintaro’s soul shrank within him. It was just as he thought! They were like that at seventeen, he said to himself, and the picture of roguish, bright-eyed O Fumi San vanished from his heart, and O Matsu, his pet aversion, obsessed him once more.

The real O Matsu, humbly gathering up the supper things, vanished backward through the screen door, leaving Kintaro lost in gloomy meditations. Suddenly the thought of Noguchi’s present came to him, and he shook off his forebodings, to open the cupboard, unroll the _kakemono_,[52] and hang it in the _tokonoma_,[53] the place of honor in the room.

How radiantly lovely it looked as it hung there! Kintaro gazed at it as one enchanted, until to his imagination the face and figure seemed those of a living woman. Surely those mournful eyes were looking at him! That mouth which had been so sad was almost smiling! He moved uneasily to the other side of the room, and looked again. The eyes were still following him. He turned his back and sat with his face to the wall. At last he could bear it no longer, and looked around to see the eyes still fixed upon him, and the lips curving into a smile about which there could be no mistake.

His spirit melted within him. His whole soul went out to the fair being in the picture. Long after he had gone to bed he lay with wide open eyes, staring at the _tokonoma_, and at the graceful figure that seemed to move back and forth, to draw near and recede, in the dim light of the night lantern.

From that time life put on a new aspect for Kintaro. In the daytime his _kakemono_ lay rolled up and hidden in the cupboard, and he worked at his art as best he could. But work as he might, only one image was before his eyes, only one thought possessed his mind. He had written to his parents that he was coming home in six months, and asked them to let the matter of O Fumi San wait until his return; and with his mind thus free for a time from the vexing question, he let his thoughts centre about the lady of the scroll. Every night, as soon as O Matsu’s ministrations were over, he hung the _kakemono_ on the wall, and lived in its companionship until morning. He grew pale and thin. His fellow students joked him on his appearance, and asked him which of the fashionable geishas of the day was making havoc with his heart, but he bristled up so fiercely at the jesting, and put his hand to his side with so meaning a motion, that the mirth died away in their throats, and he was left alone with his art and his dreams.

One evening, when O Matsu had carried away his supper tray, and he had hung up the _kakemono_ in its accustomed place, Kintaro sat down at his desk to write. His soul was so full that it must find expression, and his thoughts poured out upon the paper in a poem to the object of his worship. It was not very good poetry, perhaps, but it came from the depths of an honest young heart, and it relieved his mind. He wrote it out in his best hand on a poem card and hung it beside the picture, just as he had often hung poems on the branches of his favorite plum-tree at Kameido.

The moon was shining so brightly that night that Kintaro put out his lamp and sat in the moonlight on the piazza of his little room. The scent of the plum-blossoms was in the air, and in the street below sounded the beating of drums, the clatter of many clogs, and the sweet, high voices of excited children, for there was a great temple festival in progress, and the whole city was out making holiday. Then suddenly there stood before him in the moonlight the beautiful lady of the scroll.

Kintaro did not dare to move. He thought it must be a dream. But the vision, if vision it were, sank gracefully to the floor, bowed low three times, and began to speak. The voice was low and sweet, and the language was pure and elegant.

“You have done me many and great favors,” said his beautiful visitor, “and I have been very happy since I came here. If what you say in your poem is true, and if you really wish me to stay with you, I will be yours forever.”

Kintaro was choking with joy and fear. He gasped, he nearly fainted. He seized the hand of the picture lady, and it was so warm and soft and human that his courage returned and he was himself again. Far into the night they talked, and in answer to his eager questions she told him all about herself.

“I lived many years ago,” she said, “in China. I was a gentleman’s daughter, and my name was Shorei.” A tear fell from her eyes upon Kintaro’s hand. “One year there was a famine, and riots among the peasantry, and my father’s house was burned. We ran away and hid, for we were all afraid of the peasants. We went up into the mountains, and I was taken by a robber. He sold me”--she shuddered--“sold me”--her voice dropped to a whisper--“to a tea-house.”

She was weeping now, and so was Kintaro. “They said I was beautiful, they gave me fine clothes, and they petted me and made much of me. It was there that the painter painted my picture. They tried to make me like the life, but I could not bear it. I died.”

Kintaro started violently and dropped her hand. She looked at him with her sweet, sorrowful eyes.

“I was glad when I was dead,” she said, “for spirits cannot suffer as I suffered. Then I came to your country, and when I saw how you loved my picture, I thought perhaps you would love me.”

She looked at him reproachfully, and he stretched forth his hand to her, but she vanished from his sight.

In the street the lanterns twinkled and the clogs clattered and the children shouted and sang, but Kintaro sat alone, staring at the spot where his scroll lady had been, until the city sank to sleep and the moon went down.

All the next day his thoughts were on his picture lady. He could hardly wait for the coming of night, and he hurried poor little O Matsu about her final work until she retired with her broad red face drawn into a woeful pucker and tears in her beady black eyes.

When he hung up the scroll he noticed that the lips were smiling, and that the eyes seemed a shade less sad. They were looking to-night, not at him, but beyond him at the little desk at which he studied and wrote. On the desk lay a card on which was written in an elegant feminine hand a poem. Eagerly he read it, and the tears sprang to his eyes. It was only a couplet,--

“God’s will it is that here I stay To love and live with you alway.”

Over and over again he read it, and he held out his hands to the picture. “Is it true?” he asked. “Will you live with me always?”

The soft eyes looked full into his, the beautiful lips smiled. It was enough. His joy was so great that he could not speak, but he sat in a transport until the lamp burned out, and he lay down on his quilt to dream of Shorei.

For six months Kintaro kept up his intercourse with the spirit of Shorei and lived in an ecstasy. One night, late in August, when the crickets were chirping and the whole population of Tokyo was walking the streets for a breath of fresh air before closing the shutters for the night, Kintaro sat, in the restful quiet born of a hot bath and a thin kimono, on the piazza of his little room. Suddenly Shorei came to him, and her face was sad. She sank to the ground weeping, and bowed her head to the floor.

“The end has come,” she said. “I have been so happy with you here that I had hoped it could be always so. But I must go. You will never see Shorei again.”

In vain Kintaro asked why she must leave him. She only said, “To-morrow you shall know;” and then, as she vanished from his sight, he heard her whisper, “We will meet soon again.”

All night he wept, and in the morning, when he laid the _kakemono_ in its cupboard, he felt as if he were burying a dead friend.

Just as he closed the cupboard and was turning away to look about his empty room, Matsu thrust her head through the door. Between her finger-tips she held a letter. She laid it down in front of him, and backed out to bring his breakfast.

Kintaro unrolled the long, thin sheet of paper, and as he read his face clouded. “‘In Tokyo,’” he read; “‘meet her to-day--at the Koyo Kwan.’[54] Impossible! I can’t!” and he thought of Shorei and all she had been to him. Then suddenly those last words came to him, “To-morrow you shall know. We will meet again soon.” It was all so strange; perhaps this would explain it.

Very carefully Kintaro dressed himself that afternoon, and very spruce and handsome he looked in his flowing silk garments when he stepped out of his jinrikisha at the Maple Club Inn, to meet an old friend of his father’s who, accompanied by his wife, was visiting in Tokyo. This friend it was who had undertaken, for the sake of both parties concerned, to bring about a meeting between him and O Fumi San.

There was a feast set in a great upper room, and when Kintaro entered and took his seat in the lowest place, as became his age and rank, he was greeted with smiles and bows from many old friends and neighbors assembled to do honor to the occasion.

The first greetings ended,--no light matter in such a company,--he had time to look about him and see what there was to be seen. On the opposite side of the room, just facing him, dressed in the dainty full dress of the modest Japanese maiden, was a vision from which he could not move his startled eyes. The quaint old-fashioned dress was gone, so was the expression of unutterable sadness, but the face was the face of his lady of the scroll.

“Shorei!” he murmured, scarcely knowing what he said. The beautiful face lighted up. Into the bright eyes flashed just a glance of recognition. “I am Fumi,” said the vision, and they bowed their faces to the floor.

FOOTNOTES:

[52] A scroll to hang on the wall.

[53] The alcove in which pictures are hung in a Japanese room.

[54] The Maple Club Inn.