Almost in the same moment, Tsuya was in his tracks and at his heels, for what reason she knew best. Just as the two men were about to step into the boat, she caught them by their sleeves.
“Santa-san,” she spoke to the boatman, “no offence to you, I assure you, but I can’t feel—somehow—things are just right. Take me along, too, I pray you. You will never get into trouble on my account—I’ll see you don’t!”
“Aha, ha! What should I hear but this stuff and nonsense, young lady?” Santa, who had regardlessly sprung into the wherry, guffawed, even as he began to untie the fastening rope. “You’re at the tricks of a spoilt child—but you sure don’t mean it! No trouble for me or anything, I tell you; but what is all this fuss for? As if somebody were going to gobble him up! Just leave it to my Boss, and everything will be all right. You ought to see—I know, you do see—that your going there would simply mean poking a stick in the wheel—when it’s going on famously, too!”
“If it has to be that way, I could keep myself in some other room and wait while the talking goes on. So, don’t go without me, for goodness’ sake! I don’t know why, but I do feel that I shouldn’t let him go alone, tonight.”—She nimbly took a small gold piece out of her sash folds.
“It’s not every day that I ask you to do such a thing for me, Santa-san,” Tsuya said, furtively offering the money up to the boatman’s palm. “Once in a while, you might do me a good turn—now!”
“It’s only the other day you gave me a good piece—no, you’re too free of giving, and my Boss wouldn’t like it.” After a moment of his unwonted indecision in such matter, he handed the proffered money back to her. To this young boatman, seemingly the most important one amongst Seiji’s hired hands, Tsuya had been most generous; of him she had been most considerate. What seemed to be his stony attitude just when she stood so badly in need of his help, was, therefore, all the more wounding.
“I can appreciate the way you feel about me,” said Shinsuké, “but, if your coming is just what Seiji-san thought wasn’t the thing to do, I’d hate to do so in face of the wish of the man who is giving himself all this trouble on our account—perhaps, a thing I should never forgive myself for, afterward.” His apparent attempt to soothe her perturbed mind and to console her into a new point of view, was however scarcely more successful with her than it was with himself. For, as he paused at the water’s edge in the half-light of the dusk fast closing in, his face was washed with an uncanny pallor, and his shoulders continued to tremble.
“Well, then, whatever trouble may come up after you have a talk there, you will be sure—won’t you?—to come back to me before you do anything.”
“You may depend on me—,” replied Shinsuké, giving an emphatic nod. “Not that I fear anything like that, though.” Night of all nights, with the wish of his long yearning heart about to be granted!—he might well have been pleased and happy, what time he really wanted to cry from a sinking heart. Why could he not take Tsuya right here and now and run away again, he even asked himself; for, he felt, whereby his mind might be relieved of its weight.
There had been on that day, as rarely in winter, a wind from the south, since early in the day, bearing on its wings an air of stagnant warmth. Tsuya, what of a headache of which she had complained since the morning, putting cure plaster on her temples, and of her emotions stifled the while tears welled to her eyes during her harangue with the boatman Santa, found herself now sunk in a weary helplessness and languor of a half-sickness. Her tear-swelled eyes, however, were strained in a fixed gaze, as she leaned against the sash of her upstairs window and followed the boat outward bent. It was still too early for the moon of the last quarter. A grim monstrosity of cloud, heaving beyond the fire tower at the “New Great Bridge,” outspreading swift and low in its menacing advance, had soon overrun across half the face of the ebony sky; the drapery of black night was lowered over the world of man. Santa’s boat, light of movement, had sped on bearing away its torch fire which was soon lost in the depths of river mists.
By the time the boat had cleared the mouth of the canal to glide out into the midstream of the great river, Shinsuké had discovered himself wrapt in the void expanse of blackness, his eyes fastened upon a tiny speck of light that his long pipe gave, with a mind dispelled of cheer.
“What an unpleasant night,” he muttered half to himself. “It looks like bad weather tomorrow.”
“I’d like to see the good weather keep up till New Year, at least,” opined Santa; “it looks like a slim chance, though. When the wind falls off, it’s going to rain—any time now.” He changed now from pole to oar. And the oar began to grind out a light squeak on its iron pivot and its rhythmic beat went on as if it teased one moment the water, lapping at the boatside, only the next moment to float away on its coursing face. Then, Santa added:
