“Enough of that! I wouldn’t think of it for a moment!” she turned her face away, in an instant huff. “I know I belong where I am now, as I told you a while ago. All that of being a lady means nothing to me, not to my taste. If you love me, let me be!”
“There you are again, with your old perversity! What a heart that should—that you could be deaf to this from the lips of a man about to die! For this I should have suffered! No soul so rotten I have seen or heard of but thinks of what should be done for the love of his parents. Or, can it mean that you yourself, knowing of the worst in the trade of the geisha, have become rotten even to your heart?”
“Rotten—yes, rotten I am! Have no more goodness to think of my papa or mama—not even in my dreams!” She pulled herself up with wilful petulance. As suddenly almost, she turned and collapsed, burying her face on his shoulder; she began to appeal and beseech, in a voice broken by violent sobs. “Why have we found each other again after such a long time, if only to quarrel and make us feel miserable? Because you are not right, Shin-don! You shall have your wish—your last wish, as you say—ask me anything and I will do it. But never shall you give yourself away! If you want to die, I will not let you! If you talked of it as a thing for some time after, it might be different. That you would go tomorrow when we’ve met only tonight—oh, you are too heartless!”
Swept over by the violent passion of the woman who would listen neither to reason nor rhyme, Shinsuké was overwhelmed into a helpless silence, though his mind gave no promise of change. She was at last brought round to another mind. “Perhaps, I shouldn’t press my own way, too much. Let us be friends again, at least. And stay a couple of days or so with me, upstairs in our place.” She was insistent, begged, appealed to his heart.
“Knowing of harsh words between us and they not made up, I couldn’t go to my death in peace;” Shinsuké aired what was aimed at once to be an apology to his conscience and an attempt at glossing over his own weakness before her: he had given way to her entreaty.
“We can’t be quite at home or free to do all our talking in here. Before you should change your mind, let us leave this place. We’ll drink over at our place, upstairs.”
At last, Tsuya was now a happy woman, happy beyond measure. Lifting herself to her feet, uncertain to respond to her mind, she took him by the hand and urged him to go, persistently.
They took the precaution not to leave the Obana-ya in company. They fell in together at a corner a little way off. Along the path bathed in the pale shimmer of a mist veiled moon, the shadows of two love-doves were printed, as the pair plodded on with their hearts filled with almost nameless emotions, as on that night of their flight. Facing the garden of the Buddhist temple, Eitai-ji, which occupied a space within the premises of the Hachiman Temple, on the one side story along the bank of a canal, there was seen a house with a lantern hung outside the front entrance illumining forth the name of “Tsuta-ya” which was Tsuya’s present home. The house itself was not large, but two or three geisha serving under her, a servant maid in attendance, choice woodwork and upholstery in display in the upstairs room, bespoke of a home and living of fair comfort. A little girl of fifteen or sixteen years, came out as far as the lattice door at the entrance to greet her mistress who, having whispered something in her ear, went in, unshod herself hurriedly, and led the way for him up the stairs.
Of those days at the home of the Suruga-ya where their love was possible only in snatches, all the sweeter because clandestine; and of those days at the boatman’s home on the front of the Onagikawa canal, a period of twenty days or so, brief as a dream, passed in the joys of a madcap love, no longer trammeled by fear or care, but occasionally exposed to boatmen’s teasing chaffs which seemed but to add zest to their enjoyment:—of these Tsuya so fondly remembered, and these memories out of the past made her bemoan their love that was to be so fleeting and vain.
“I remember you scolded me one time when I called myself after the manner of a geisha; but you won’t mind it, if I do now, will you?” And she was at once speaking in the bold vernacular of her trade. When she caught him calling her by the less familiar name of “Tsu-chan,” as he had been wont to do, she rebuked him for the manner she considered as cold. Even if for this night only, she asked him to feel himself her true wedded man and call her “O-Tsuya.” “And for that I shall no longer call you ‘Shin-don,’ ” she said, “but you will be ‘Shin-san,’14 as my husband should be.”
Drinks he had taken in plenty and wished for no more. But she would not hear of it, and pressed them upon him, almost pouring down through parted lips. Of Shinsuké who had once boasted of such a capacity for drinks, it was strange that he should become so easily susceptible to the effect of sake,15 unless, perhaps, a real taste for the drink, of which he was now capable, had put a finer edge on the fibre of his nerves as well. For, as time scored its hours, he could feel the drink imbuing deeper and deeper into his system, melting even to the marrow of his bones.
Three short days
