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For while waiting for Yejiro to get dinner ready I became aware that something was going on in what stood for hall; and on pushing the shoji gently apart I beheld the whole household at evening prayers before an altar piece, lighted by candles and glittering with gilded Buddhas and bronze lotus flowers.
It was trying to wait for the coming of Red Shirt, but it was still more trying to wait for his coming out again. We could not go to sleep, nor could we remain with our faces stuck to the shoji all the time our minds constantly in a state of feverish agitation. In all my life, I never passed such fretful, mortifying hours.
Within a hotel or even a common dwelling house, nobody knocks before entering your room; there is nothing to knock at except a shoji or a fusuma, which cannot be knocked at without being broken. And in this world of paper walls and sunshine, nobody is afraid or ashamed of fellow-man or fellow-woman. Whatever is done is done after a fashion in public.
His voice trembled when he answered: "Lady, I feel glorified, satisfied and nigh about petrified. Look at that!" Below lay Shoji, its shimmering waters rimmed with velvety green. Every raindrop on the pines was a prism; the mountain a brocade of blossom.
Mata, busy about her household tasks, sometimes passed across the matting, or flaunted a dusting-cloth within a partly opened shoji. At such moments her look and gesture were eloquent of disdain. Her patience, long tried by the kindly irritable master, was about at an end. Surely a spoiled old man-child like the crouching figure yonder would exhaust the forbearance of Jizo Sama himself!
Though the lamplight shines through the shoji, still in next month the owner of the light will be different and the ache come into my heart. Whole Japan are changed, and everything I see or hear makes me think of him; but my thoughts of him never, never changed, yet more and more increase and longing for him all time. My heart speak the much word of love for Merrit San.
A little later, when the neighborhood reverberated to the slamming of amado and the sharp rattle of paper dusters against taut shoji panes; when fragrant faggot smoke went up from every cottage, and the street cries of itinerant venders signalled domestic buying for the day, Mata discovered the wild man in the garden, and roused her sleeping master with the news. "O Haiyo gozaimasu!" he called.
She drew her sword. "Help! Help!" she cried. "Tanaka!" Something wrenched at her wrist, and the blade fell. At the same moment the inner shoji flew open like the shutter of a camera. Tanaka rushed into the room. Asako did not turn to look again until she was outside the room with her maid and her cook trembling beside her.
On such a midsummer dawn, not many years ago, old Kano Indara, sleeping in his darkened chamber, felt the summons of an approaching joy. Beauty tugged at his dreams. Smiling, as a child that is led by love, he rose, drew aside softly the shoji, then the amado of his room, and then, with face uplifted, stepped down into his garden.
He was full of enthusiasm for the land of soft voices and smiling faces, where countless little shops spread their wares under the light of the evening lanterns, where the twang of the samisen and the geisha's song are heard coming from the lighted tea-house, and the shadow of her helmet-like coiffure is seen appearing and disappearing in silhouette against the paper shoji.
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