It must have been close upon midnight. The cold air relentlessly oozed its way into the house. While at a pause in the verandah hall, Shinsuké shivered as he had to feel the cold draughts coming in between the sliding doors. Out of the warm depths of his bosom, he pulled out his hand to take the lantern and relieve his right hand, which was now chilled to the aching point, and on which he kept blowing his warm breath. He could feel his thighs so bare and chilly in their touch against each other, as if they were not his own. His shivers, however, may not have been accountable by the cold only.
“Is that you. Shin-don?” hailed Tsuya, just as he was going past outside the sleeping room. She either awoke just then, or had been awake throughout. Then, she apparently opened the shade over the globe-shaped lantern to turn it toward the hall, for the glow on the paper outside was thrown into a brighter light.
“Yes, it is myself. The master’s late, and I thought I should go around to make sure about the doors.”
“You’re ready to turn in, now?”
“No, I shall just stay up all night until the Master comes home.”
As he spoke those words, he lowered himself on his knees outside the room, placing his hands down, correctly putting himself in an attitude of respect due to the daughter of the family. Almost at the same instant, the screen doors were pushed back, opening about a foot wide.
“It is cold out there; come in and shut the doors behind.” Combing back her stray hair, she sat up amidst the silk quilts, her long-lashed eyes fixed, in open adoration, on the face of the man, which, even in a subdued light, appeared so white and handsome.
“They have all gone to bed, I suppose?”
“No, young mistress, I expect Shota back from his errand every second. As soon as he comes, he shall be sent to bed, and until then—”
“Oh, patience and more patience until I shall have no more!—When we have got tonight such a chance as we can ever hope for! Now, listen, Shin-don, I hope you, after all this time, are ready tonight, with your mind made up?”
Tsuya, covered only by her under-robe of bright red dappled crepe which clung close to the lines of her form, sat unmindful of her white feet peeking out, in their dainty arrangement, from under the quilts, as she put her hands together, as in the manner of prayer offering.
“Whatever do you mean by being ready and so forth, my young mistress?”
Overcome by the force of the beauty before him, a force that seemed to sweep away his soul, the man lifted his eyes in a stare almost too frank and childlike for his twenty years, and waited for the very answer he was afraid to give to himself.
“Run away with me to Fukagawa, tonight. That’s all I’m going to say. See how I pray you!”
“Impossible,” he said; but he was really troubled to think how he might steel himself against what seemed to tempt him with a stupendous force of voluptuous bewitchery. Since he came into the service here, as a young lad of fourteen, he had got on so well that his master had come to repose in him so much confidence as he would do in few young men. A year or two more of patience and good work, and his master would set him up in business and, if he could not have the happiness of marrying the lovely Tsuya, he would be on his way to whatever fortune and name he might desire. What, then, would be the happiness of his old parents who were living only in hopes of such time? The idea of taking advantage of a girl still too young, the daughter of his own master, was preposterous; he could not—he should not do it; repeatedly he told himself.
“So, Shin-don, you’ve forgotten what you promised me the other day, have you? Yes, now I see it all through. It was only a plaything you meant to make of me. And when it came to that, you would throw me away. It is as plain as I would ever care to see it.”
“It is nothing of the sort that—”
He was about to extend his comforting hands to Tsuya who was heaving her shoulders with half-stifled sobs, when there came a loud and persistent knocking on the front door. Taken aback by the youngster’s announcement of himself, Shinsuké suddenly sprang to his feet, lantern in hand, a picture of consternation.
“Later, then, I shall be sure to come when Shota has been sent to bed, and we shall talk it over, as you please. If you are of so strong a mind as you say, I will think once again, and—”
It was after some moments of a tender struggle that he could detach himself from Tsuya’s clinging hands. Returning to the front part of the house, again fully composed, he hastened to open the small side-door.
“Oh, I’m frozen!” cried the boy, as he darted in, almost head over heels.
“It’s turned to snow. Shin-don,” he reported, brushing off the snow on the broad hat. “It looks sure like going to pile up thick tonight.”
It was about an hour later that the young apprentice, having done justice to his share of the midnight repast, crawled into bed and fell asleep. The wind seemed to have blown itself out; but the snow was evidently going on, for a dead stillness had settled outside on the streets whence all life had been driven off to slumber. Shinsuké came back with a few lumps of charcoal which he had taken out of the trap in the kitchen
