What she had expected was to come out before long. The boatman Seiji had her placed—as bad as locked her up—in a room for the obvious reason which was to bring him there every day.
“I have been in love with you ever so long,” he owned. “The fact is, that it was all a part of my plan to inspire Shinsuké with the idea to run away with you. Whatever wickedness I am guilty of, was from my desire to get you. So, feel for me, and be my mistress, as I ask you. Consent, and all you wish for shall be yours!”
To her question about Shinsuké’s whereabouts, however, he would never give clear cut answer. “Oh, that one?—Well, you may as well forget about him,” he would say sometimes. “I’ve sent him back to his old man’s home, the other day.” There was of course no question but this was a lie. It was as certain that the while he kept up his pretense, the boatman had never taken their case either to her folks or Shinsuké’s, since he took the couple under his roof. Tsuya had concluded that Shinsuké had ten to one been murdered, and yet she was not so easy to give him up for lost for all time.
This confinement went on for rather a long period of time, from the to around . Patient and determined as the boatman was, he was met by as dogged a mind on her part who would yield herself neither to threat nor cajolery. She was not freed from this state of confinement until Tokubey who had followed the affair was at last moved to make intercession for her, and perhaps convinced Seiji that he would be better rewarded otherwise than by torment. Now placed under strict watch, she was sometimes running on little errands, and at some other times was served with servile flattery that was but disgusting. It was to a new line of tactics, of thawing her heart with kindness, that Seiji’s mind had swung to, now.
Tokubey was a man of about the same age as Seiji, but of a mind, presumably, capable of deeper craft and design; under a consistently suave appearance he never permitted himself to show a ruffled or real man. It was a fact that under casual observation he could be taken for a man of good sense and heart. He interposed his mind between Seiji and Tsuya, with a different tune for each one, as he meant to make him or her dance thereto. Tokubey was particularly attentive to make use of sly moments to impress her mind with his kindness, which was as cheap as its motive was thin. “So, this man, too, has his eyes on me!” Tsuya was quick to perceive it, and began to give herself an air of one leaning on his growing kindness, to put him off his guard as much as possible, to make him the more open to attack, later on. The first chance she should get, she would flee from Sunamura and set out on her quest for Shinsuké.
One evening when she was waiting upon him—and upon his whims—with drinks, she said between soliloquy and question: “I have given up Shinsuké for good and true; but I’m wondering what’s become of the man.” Whereupon, quite to her surprise, Tokubey’s lips dropped a story that gave her a dreadful inkling of what had hitherto been completely screened from her. That Seiji caused, on that night, his faithful Santa to kill Shinsuké on the riverside road; that the same Santa, for some reason or other, got a new notion into his head, after his deed, and killed the boatman’s wife by strangling, to run away with their money; that Seiji had since taken to himself a third wife;—all these things told by Tokubey, though not as information at first hand, appeared to fit in line with circumstances of the case. Tsuya felt that she had been now brought where she should abandon all hopes for Shinsuké. From that hour she had set her heart, she said, upon taking vengeance, somehow—some when—upon Seiji for the sake of the man lost to her forever.
It was shortly after this that Tokubey made his proposition to the boatman which was somewhat in the following strain:—“You will have to wait forever to win the girl over, for your purpose. But she is too precious a jewel to be sunk into the mud of a brothel. Suppose you let me have her for a good price, and I’ll see if she wouldn’t appear as a geisha through our house at the Naka-cho.” Seiji found it difficult to give her up, and it was his reluctant consent that he gave at last, when he broke himself of his desire and washed his hands of her.
“Were you yet a maiden it would make all the difference. And what I ask you to be is a geisha. Will you not do this, just to meet me halfway, if for nothing else?” Tokubey’s demand, because it was garbed as a humble entreaty, could not very well be
