The soft lines of Shinsuké’s appearance belied his strength, for he was a youth of good height, muscular, with a stock of sinewy power above the average. As he felt his nerves gripped by surging emotions, he would oft tighten his clasping hand with such a convulsive force that Tsuya felt as if her right hand, so small and frail and now chilled to freezing point, were about to be crushed out. And she would as oft give a little cry of pain. “Nothing the matter with you, I hope, Shin-don?” she would ask at such times, with concern in her voice, lifting her searching eyes into his. And her long-slit eyes glistened even in the dark with a glow, as of a strong mind.
When they had crossed the New Great Bridge, there came eight strokes of midnight. The clanging note of the bell, floating out and far in its resonant roar, seemed to summon to its wild shriek the soul of the water, now swelled to its full on a flow of sea tide, with its bosom bared to the falling snow, moved on with a chill and stillness of death.
Tsuya who had remained sparing of words till now broke the silence: “That bell is so fascinating—it’s so much like what we see on the stage!”
“Well, your nerves are stronger than mine,” Shinsuké retorted, showing a grin that was mirthless, and even bitter. They returned to silence after this, and remained so until they reached the boatman’s house, perched on the side of the Onagigawa stream.
Part II
“To settle the thing right and proper, you shouldn’t be too hasty, you know. Ten days or so of patience. In the meantime, you had better stay away from people as much as possible. Our rooms upstairs shall be at your disposal—just keep your happy selves in there, and I wish you all pleasure!”
So said Seiji, as he received the young pair. His wife and all the menial hands were properly instructed and warned. Their friendliness was excelled only by their hospitable eagerness to serve their wants. However, ten days had gone by, and even a month had passed, without any tangible good news from the boatman.
“Seiji-san10 is a busy man and, because things didn’t turn out just as he had hoped, he might be staying back, though he wouldn’t like to disappoint us as yet.”
It was a piece of suspicion that had begun to dawn upon Shinsuké’s mind. Tsuya, however, would take the situation in a more philosophical vein.
“Why worry yourself like that, dear?” she would say. “Now that we’ve run away together, what difference if we were never taken back by our folks? We might just as well take up a home for us two only. Why, we might be better off that way, after all, and who knows? I’ve never felt so happy in all my life, as I do now. Little care, let me tell you, if I never went home to them!”
Since coming to this new abode, Tsuya had completely changed; she was more buoyant, jolly and bold. Their window looked down, almost straight below, upon a stone built bank which rose sharp over a narrow canal running into the Sumida river. Hither would daily be brought a swarm of roofed wherries to take on parties of men and geisha who had brought with them the spirit of the gay quarters in Fukagawa and up the river. Nor was it a rare happening that some of these parties should take up rooms partitioned from the young pair’s room only by the doors of paper screen, and plunge into a free and open jollity, as careless as it was annoying. It was not long before Tsuya began to pick many ways and manners from these people she saw or heard. Her hair which was done in a maiden style when she left her home soon had to be changed. On the fourth day after she came here, she had her hair washed and combed back into an easy knot at the back of her head, with only a single comb stuck in sidewise, a style of comfort at the expense of decorum. Donning a dressing gown of garish pattern that the boatman’s wife offered her against the cold and the frequent practice of smoking crowned her attempt to imitate what was thought to be the “at home” manners of a geisha. When she picked up some words from the vernacular of the prostitute class and unwittingly used them a couple or so times, Shinsuké thought he should step in and call a halt.
“What language for you to speak?” he said, with his brow knit with displeasure. “Why should you have to take to the ways of those wretches? I am even too proud to speak of them.” He fought for his and their dignity of mind. It was not difficult to imagine that, but for his Tsuya, he might have remained true to the accepted idea of the regular life of a man.
It was small heed, however, that the young woman would give to his ideas on such lines. She had been completely carried away by her own happiness and her satisfaction with the new life, and made it a life of frivolous laughter, from morn till night. And just to feel the fullness of her heart, she would even rhapsodize her whims and fancies at meals, ordering this dish and that to indulge in epicurean luxury. She would grow generous every third day or so and declare a wholesale treat to the entire family, remembering even the hired boatmen. Through the thoughtfulness of Seiji there were always bottles of
