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Even her father's well-known madness for things of art could scarcely atone to his child for this indignity. Kano had gone promptly to his bath. He was now emerging. His bare feet grazed the wooden corridor. Mata ran to him. "Good! Ah, that was good!" he said heartily. "Five years of aches have I left in the tub!"
The horse kept out of bow-shot, while the foot went up as they felt courage or inclination, and kept up a straggling fire, with about thirty muskets and the shooting of arrows. In the front of the Sulfcaa, the Zeg-Zeg troops had one French fusil: the Kano forces had forty-one muskets.
"There are gardens, too; and a broad, shining river. Shall we not go to the autumn flowering garden of the Hundred Corners?" "To such a place as that I would go alone, or with her," said the boy, his disconcerting gaze fixed on the other's face. "When is the Dragon Maiden to appear?" Kano looked down upon the matting.
"You are asked for nothing but the earliest possible date for the marriage!" "Do you give yourself so tamely to a dangerous wild creature from the hills?" Mata demanded of the girl. "Yes, yes, she'll marry him," said Kano, before her words could come. "The date, the earliest possible hour! Will two weeks be too soon?" "Two weeks!" shrieked the old dame, and staggered backward.
Through all these busy days Umè-ko moved as one but little interested. Kano and Uchida noticed nothing unusual. To them she was merely the conventional nonenity of maidenhood that Japanese etiquette demanded. It never entered their heads that she would not have agreed with equal readiness to any other husband of their choosing. Mata knew her idol and nursling better.
They give him food and clothing, and sometimes sheets of paper, like these here." With affected unconcern he raised the long roll. "Yes, they give him paper, with real ink and brushes. Then he leaps up the mountain side and paints and paints for hours, like a demon. But as soon as he has eased his soul of a sketch he lets the first gust of wind blow it away." Kano was now shivering in his place.
These littérateurs were the predecessors of the celebrated Kamo and Motoori, of whom there will be occasion to speak by and by. Tsunayoshi's patronage extended also to the field of the fine arts. The Tokugawa Bakufu had hitherto encouraged the Kano School only whereas the Tosa Academy was patronized by the Court at Kyoto.
Mata and old Kano, accustomed to these midnight sounds, merely turned on their lacquered pillows, murmured "Poor tormented Tatsu," and went to sleep again. It had been a day of power for the young artist, but not a day of peace. The picture he had worked on he would have called one of his "nightmare fancies." It showed a slender form in gray with one arm about a willow.
He leaped to the veranda, now a mere ledge thrust out over darkness, threw an arm about the slender corner-post, and strained far out, gasping, into the night. Kano filled his pipe with leisurely deliberation. The time was past for fear. In a few moments the boy returned, his face ugly, black, and sullen. "I will be your son if you give me the maiden," he muttered.
From Kano they departed for Sockatoo, which is a well built city, laid out in regular streets, and containing a large number of inhabitants. The palace was merely a large enclosure, consisting of a multitude of straw huts separated from each other. The sultan was away on a ghrazzie or slave-hunt, but returned next day, and sent for the English traveller.
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