What Kinzo had seen of the young man, of the creditable way he had carried himself since coming under his shelter, led him to the trusting belief he would not efface himself were he given a free hand now. There was a fear none the less that Shinsuké, under the sway of Tsuya’s mind, might take his life into his own hand even as she might hers. Wherefore, he put Shinsuké under probation as he asked—
“How would you intend to do by Tsuya-chan, if you saw her?”
“I’ll persuade her out of what she is doing,” his answer was prompt and clearly enunciated, as coming from a firmly set mind. “I will see that she goes back to her father’s home.”
“That’s the word!” Kinzo was pleased. “Now, you are talking like the good honourable soul that I used to know before.” Then, he took out a bundle of money and placed it before Shinsuké for his farewell present. Shinsuké declined it as not needed for his purpose, since he had had savings from his business during these four months. With ready acquiescence, Kinzo took back his offering. He felt that the young man would not benefit himself by having on him more money than really necessary.
There was on that evening a faint breath of wind that came bearing a balmy warmth out of the south, and in the moonbeams coming through the wreaths of gauzy mist, the face of each soul passing in the street appeared so softly white as the magnolia flower as even to suggest its fragrance—one of those eves that spring, only in the fullness of her heart, can bear forth. Shinsuké’s palanquin went straight on through the Takabashi line, and to the Kuroecho; a turn to the left before the first torii or gateway to the Hachiman temple, the carriage came to a halt in front of the entrance porch of the Obana-ya. Teahouses were not unknown to him; yet never had he been to one placed, as this was, in the heart of a gay quarter.
His announcement of himself was received and echoed among the waiting hands as “the guest that the master of Narihira-cho had sent,” serving as a sort of password commanding suave attention. He was shown into a good sized room way in back, an isolated suite which looked on a garden with clusters of green foliage amongst which a lantern was seen in a flickering glow behind its paper shade of trellis frame. He could scarce believe that amidst the place of gaiety and pleasures so boisterously pursued, there should be a place of such sequestered peace, and of such refined taste.
“Let me see a girl called Somékichi, and I want no other geisha”: his request, voiced as it was in a tone of such uncompromising insistence, gave a suggestion of mockery. He might well have been taken for a man about town who, so assured of his own matchless comeliness, had come with his mind bent upon this rage for masculine passion, purposely attired in a simplicity that was almost ungainly, to make his conquest all the more romantic and savoury.
It was after time had drawn out to be burdensome for Shinsuké, who sat waiting with his back leaned against the alcove post, that the door directly behind him was opened. Showing a slight and dainty tilt in the head which supported elaborately made coiffeur, Somékichi had entered; she was no other than the girl of his quest. She was dressed that night in a lined dress of striped blue crepe over an under-gown of silk finely dappled on a bluish brown ground, girt with a sash of black satin heavily embroidered chrysanthemum flowers with gold threads, showing below, at each step, the fringe of chequered silk petticoat, and in a toilet of light powder. A change into a piquant brilliancy, quite befitting a girl reputed to be the sensation of the place.
A quick glance at the back of the man, and Tsuya broke into a flurry, pattering her soft bare feet as if they clung at each step to the fresh covered mat on the floor, and coming round in front, face to face with him, she gave a little cry of keen happiness. In an instant, her face lost its colour for the suddenness of happy shock, but, in the next, she sank herself close before him, almost upon his laps.
“Oh, what happiness to find you again and safe!” she said, pressing her hands strongly upon his knees, as she spurted out her joy. “How I wanted to see you! Oh, how I longed!”
“Tomorrow I am to give up myself—and such a girl as this.”—forthwith, the thought flashed through his mind. He was conscious of a mad desire to live rising in his mind.
It was a long story since they parted from each other, at the closing of that unforgettable day, the ;—and she was the first to give her account. On the same evening, soon after Shinsuké was called away, the boatman’s wife announced that there was little doing that evening and all were due for an evening off, and all of the servant maids and hired men were sent out somewhere under such pretext. The wife and Tsuya, left alone in the house, were having a chat when that downpour of rain came on. Amidst those torrents, Seiji came home heavily drunk, followed by two or three strangers. Without a word or warning, he had her bound, hand and foot, and thrust into a palanquin in which she was carried off to the home of Tokubey, at Sunamura. Everything having been undoubtedly prearranged, there were waiting for her there a merry batch of men, half a dozen or so of ruffians, including
