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From early in the evening up to past twelve, he would glue his eye to the shoji and keep steadily watching under the gas globe of Kadoya. He would surprise me, when I come into the room, with figures showing how many patrons there were to-day, how many stop-overs and how many women, etc. Red Shirt seems never to be coming, I said, and he would fold his arms, audibly sighing, "Well, he ought to."
"Now of whom can my master be speaking?" "You know very well of whom I am speaking, goblin! Do you not always listen at the shoji? Go, fill the pot!" Mata glided from the room with the quickness of light and in an instant had returned. Replacing the smoking vessel and maintaining a face of decorous interest, she asked, hypocritically, "And was my poor Miss Umè mortified?"
"Of course not, he's too big," laughed Asako; "but I like to run away from him sometimes, and hide behind the shoji. Then I feel independent." "But you are not really so," said the Japanese, "no woman is. You see the wisteria hanging in the big tree there. What happens when the big tree is taken away? The wisteria becomes independent, but it lies along the ground and dies.
Old Japanese cottages, dingy, neutral-tinted, with roofs of thatch, very steeply sloping, above their wooden walls and paper shoji. Green patches on all the roof-slopes, some sort of grass; and on the very summits, on the ridges, luxurious growths of yaneshobu, the roof-plant, bearing pretty purple flowers.
He began searching the house, all but the kitchen. Instinctively he avoided old Mata's domain, knowing it to be the lair of an enemy. At last necessity drove him to it also. Her face leered at him through a parted shoji. He gave a bound in her direction. Instantly she had slammed the panels together; and before he could reopen them had armed herself with a huge, glittering fish-knife.
The straw sandals worn out and replaced at each stage of a journey, the robe consisting of a few simple widths loosely stitched together for wearing, and unstitched again for washing, the fresh chopsticks served to each new guest at a hotel, the light shoji frames serving at once for windows and walls, and repapered twice a year; the mattings renewed every autumn, all these are but random examples of countless small things in daily life that illustrate the national contentment with impermanency.
In every graceful line was the imprint of high breeding; her white face, so unusual with her race, was stamped with the romance and tragedy of centuries; while her eyes, limpid and luminous, looked out at the world with eager, questioning interest. Through the wide-open shoji of the house she caught glimpses of her father and mother hurrying and holding consultations.
She wished that the cricket were indeed outside, and could tell her of the first dawn-stirring. It was very close and dark in the little room. She had not lighted the andon after all. It could not be so dark outside. With very cautious fingers she began now to separate the shoji that opened on the garden side. A breath of exquisite night air rushed in to her from the lattices above the amado.
Mata, silent for once, had crept to her child-mistress' close-shut walls, heard the last sobbing words of a Buddhist prayer for the dead, and burst through the shoji in scant time to catch back the stroke of a dagger from the girl's slim, upraised throat. Her terrified screams summoned Kano and the neighbors as well. A priest hurried down from the temple on the hill.
Alone, in her bare room her only companion a flaky yellow chrysanthemum nodding in the draught Asako sobbed and sobbed as though her heart were breaking. Somebody tapped at the sliding shutter. Asako could not answer. The shoji was pushed open, and Tanaka entered. Asako was glad to see him. Alone of the household Tanaka was still deferential in his attitude towards his late mistress.
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