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Updated: June 17, 2025
The potted plants, once Umè-ko's loved charges, had become now, quite mysteriously to himself, Tatsu's companions and his special care. Among the more familiar growths a few foreign bushes had been given place, a rose, a heliotrope, and a small, frightened cyclamen. Slips of chrysanthemum needed already to be set for the autumn yield.
Mata, prostrated at first by the loss of her nursling, soon rallied her practical old wits. She went, in secret, to the hospital, demanded audience of the house physician, and gave to him all details of the strange situation which had culminated in Umè's desperate act of self-renunciation, and induced Tatsu's subsequent madness. She did not ask for a glimpse of the sick man.
The kindly neighbors had at first marvelled aloud at his whitening hair and heavily burdened frame. Mata, pleased at the sympathy, did nothing to distract it; but in her heart she knew that it was Tatsu's illness, not his daughter's death, that bore upon old Kano like the winter snow upon his pines.
Kano wriggled himself backward on the matting that the triumph of his face might not be seen. Now and again he leaned forward stealthily and filled Tatsu's cup. The unaccustomed fluid was already pouring in a fiery torrent through the boy's vivid brain. His hands, slipped within the tattered blue sleeves, grasped tightly each the elbow of the other arm.
The sewing was, of course, done at home. Mata would have trusted this sacred rite to no domination but her own. She worked incessantly, planning, cutting, scolding, hurrying off to the shopping district for some forgotten item, conferring with Ando Uchida about the details of Tatsu's outfit, then returning, flushed with success and importance, to new home triumphs. Umè sewed steadily all day.
Wait there, in the inner room, while I kneel a moment before our father. Oh, Tatsu, if you love me " The agony of her face and voice swept from Tatsu's mind all other feeling. He stood in the doorway, silent, as she threw herself before old Kano, praying to him as to an offended god: "Father, father, do not hold hatred against us!
Fortunately these pictures were never seen by the two most concerned. They went away on a second bridal journey, this time to Tatsu's native mountains in Kiu Shiu. While there, the good friend Ando Uchida was to be sought, and made acquainted with the strange history of the previous months. Mata and her old master remained placidly at home. They had no fears.
He realized that, perhaps, it would be better for Tatsu if he did not come at all; yet in this one issue the selfishness of love prevailed. Age and despair were to be kept at bay. He had no weapons but the hours of comparative peace he spent at Tatsu's bedside. Full twenty years seemed added to the old man's burden of life.
"Are not these all of them your work, the creations of your fancy?" He reached out for the roll that Uchida had brought. His hands trembled. In his nervous excitement the papers fell, scattering broadcast over the floor. Tatsu's dark face flashed into light. "My pictures! My pictures!" he cried aloud, like a child. "They always blow off down the mountain!" Kano picked up a study at random.
They were given Umè's chamber near which the plum tree grew, an adjoining room having been previously fitted up for Tatsu's painting. As in the other cottage, inviting rectangles of silk, already stretched and sized, stood in blank rows against the walls. Even the fusuma were of new paper, offering, it would seem, to any inspired young artist, a surface of alluring possibilities.
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