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He had sent for Tatsu, and, at the appearance of the Japanese servant, Robert whispered a word or two to him and he left the room. Just as he did so Hayden felt a slight pressure on his arm. Turning, he met Marcia's eyes. Her gaze was fastened on him with a frightened, almost imploring expression and he saw that she had again grown very pale. "What is it?" he said to her in a low voice.
It is like sitting on a dead cat. Kindly speak without further care for me. I am at ease!" Kano glanced at the burning eyes, the quivering face and twitching muscles with a smile. The intensity of ardor touched him. He drew a short sigh, the look of complacency left his for an instant, and he began, deliberately, "As you may have gathered from my letter, I am without a son." Tatsu nodded shortly.
Sketch after sketch he made, some to tear at once into strips, others to fling carelessly aside to any corner where they might chance to fall, others, again, to be stored cunningly upon some remote shelf to which old Kano and Uchida and Mata could not reach, but whence he, Tatsu, the Dragon Painter, should, in a few days more, withdraw them and show them to his bride.
A flush of embarrassment dyed her face, and she threw a half-frightened look towards Tatsu. Answering her father's unrelenting frown, she murmured, timidly, "To-morrow, if the gods will, my dear husband shall paint." Tatsu's steady gaze drew her. "Your eyes, Umè-ko. Is it true that for this to make me paint you consented to become my wife?" Umè tried in vain to resist the look he gave her.
Think of your wife's pure soul, and for its sake make effort to defy and vanquish this demon of self-destruction." "Was not her own deed that of self-destruction?" challenged Tatsu, his sunken eyes set in bitter triumph upon the abbot. "I shall but go upon the road she went." "To compare your present motives with your wife's is blasphemy," cried the other.
For the condescension they trusted that he would allow them to give a present of money, as large a sum as he was willing to name." "A second Sesshu! A second Sesshu!" old Kano would murmur to himself, in subdued ecstacy. "So did they load his ship with silk, four centuries ago!" Of most of these commissions, Tatsu never heard.
Kano whispered his discovery to the nurse, and when she wondered, explained to her with shivering earnestness that it was undoubtedly the boy's intention to break it against the iron bedstead the first moment he was left alone, and with a shard sever one of his veins. Tatsu grinned like a trapped badger when it was wrested from him, and said that he would find a way in spite of them all.
"I shall be ready at the twilight hour," he said, and went to his room. That afternoon Tatsu did little painting. Silent and motionless as one of the frames against the wall, he sat staring for long intervals out upon the garden. The sunshine gave no pleasure, only a blurring of his sight. Beauty was not there for him, this day.
Tatsu did not ask that it be changed though, indeed, each recurrent dawn brought martyrdom to him. The sound of sparrows at the eaves, the smell of dew, the look of the morning mist as it spread great wings above the city, hovering for an instant before its flight, the glow of the first pink light upon his coverlid, each was an iron of memory searing a soul already faint with pain.
"Come now, this is much better," said Kano, with a genial smile. "We shall discuss the matter like rational men." Tatsu ground his teeth so that the other heard him. "Have a pipe," said Kano. "I want no pipe." "At least make yourself at ease upon the cushion while I speak." "I am more at ease without it," said the boy, flinging the velvet square angrily across the room. "Ugh!
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