“I’m just through with it—a heap of trouble she gave!”
He was still fighting hard for his breath.
“What does she look like? Let me take a peep.”
Mistress of the situation, she calmly fed up the wick in the oil, and looked down into the woman’s face. Presumably because of blood having been sent up to the head upon strangling, her complexion looked fresh and pretty as in life. An expression of agony that lingered over her features appeared as if it trailed into the whisper of a mirthful grin. Her eyes fixed in a soulless glare on the ceiling were the only objects of grim terror.
“There is the boat all ready, out there. We’ll take this carcass along and sink it down, somewhere in the offing.—Now, about money, here is what I’ve raked up—.” Seiji almost dropped before her a weighty looking bag of straw matting, in which there was five hundred ryo in gold pieces, he explained. In this moment, the door at the kitchen entrance was noiselessly opened for a second time; Shinsuké stole in.
“Seiji-san, my greetings to you after such a long time. I’m obliged to you for all that you’ve been doing for my Tsuya.”
“What? You Shinsuké-san?”
Seiji’s face instantly paled. Before his eyes loomed forth a man, now uncovered of the hand towel in which he had come concealing his face, dressed in a light thing of blue and white, a sash of blue stripes, his glossy hair combed fresh and neat. Though now presented in the attire of loud colours and garish patterns, much after the taste of a sporting man, it was no other than Shinsuké himself.
“You said it right. I’m the same Shinsuké, at your service;—though, perhaps, a thing or two wiser than when you used to know me. And be it my pleasure to report to you that both your wife and Santa were killed at my hands.”
A brief altercation led straightway to a scuffle. Without a weapon at hand, Sejii was soon at bay. Tsuya’s arm swiftly shot out from behind his back, and clapped fast over his mouth about to cry for help. Shinsuké was given sufficient time to complete his work.
The bag of five hundred ryo that they brought back from this sally was lavished in their orgies of reckless abandon, and cleaned out toward the close of . Their hideous love had now spanned over a full year’s time.
“I really wish something nice were drifting our way soon, or we’ll be wishing each other a pretty sorry sort of New Year!” They would oft whisper between them in such complaint of fortune, as it kept sinking lower and lower. However, there was nothing forthcoming to bring them a smile or a windfall. There was but one course to be reckoned with, and Tsuya followed it with a vengeance. She brought into play the best that was in her against the men answering to her siren call, and her terms of capitulation were of relentless rigor.
The love of Shinsuké for her grew more intense, as he sped farther downward. Her explanation that she had been “at the old game again” was good enough as far as it went; but, some nights when her return home was late, he would strike out into expression of his mind tinged with veiled mistrust, and chafing with jealous fears.
“What am I to do with my baby boy? Can’t you see how deeply in love I am with you? It doesn’t seem possible that I should ever think of another man, does it? If I were to suit you like that, I might as well kiss a goodbye to my business.” She would invariably dismiss it as if his case merited little more than a flippant laugh.
However, the case of the woman who was oft late to come home had to go still farther. For, now she would fail sometimes to return before the morning, keeping him awake all night long. In face of anything he might say from his mistrustful mind in such events, she would remain in supreme composure, unembarrassed. “There are so many turns and twists to the geisha’s business, and she must be wise to them if she expects to do well. Especially, when she has irons in the fire, it is more than likely that she should have to act—and act in many foolish ways; sometimes, pretending she’s too drunk to hear the man or to wait on his pleasure, and sometimes, she has to keep this make-believe up until the next morning. It’s all part of her game, and a girl who isn’t capable of that gets the worst of it, to say nothing of fleecing a billy lamb.” This she would hold forth in her effort to confirm her faith with him and the chastity of her conduct. A man of an unsuspecting, frank turn of mind, though with gruesome records against him now, Shinsuké had scarcely initiated himself into the inner knowledge of that peculiar world of the geisha which, for all appearances to the contrary, was really bound fast to an accepted code of honour. What he knew of the geisha or the world she lived in was through Tsuya only. For all his occasional fits of jealousy, therefore, he would always end by his complacent acceptance of her reassurance.
It began to seem that Tsuya stayed out over night more frequently. What was more strange, she never came back from such absences but that she was ready with a full account for the night, going, as she had never done before, into such length and detail in offering her explanation, all the while her bearing betrayed a restive, uneasy mind. One who was of a suspicious bent might have laid to her charge that hers was the manner of one trying to keep to the self a happiness that was almost too uncontrollable.
One night
