The restaurant Kawacho, of Yanagibashi, was in those days one of the resorts of fashion. Shinsuké had been there two or three times in his master’s train, while he was in the service. That Santa was a familiar character here was patent; when he was hailed by waiting maids while making his way through the hallway, he hurled at them a teasing remark, quite to Shinsuké’s embarrassment, saying, “I’ve brought for you tonight, girls, a boy as handsome as any actor you love.” The two men were shown to a room looking out on the river, a tea room fitted up in the choice of woodwork and upholstered with the approval of the most fastidious taste. Seiji was discovered there sitting with his back against one of the alcove pillars, his face enlivened by a mellow flush of drinks.
“Just out of luck,” he said, as soon as he saw the newcomers. “Your father’s been waiting for you till a moment ago—and has just gone! Can’t tell you how sorry I am for you, Shin-don! But, then, you were so late in coming,” he added, showing a look of displeasure as was not the wont of the man; and he heaved a sigh of disappointment. But Santa went into explanation for the delay and, when he told how they were detained by Tsuya on the point of their departure, Seiji burst out in a hearty laugh, holding his sides, and his good humour was at once restored. As for Shinsuké, he was even grateful to feel himself relieved of the embarrassment of meeting his father and of the danger of being dragged willy-nilly to his home.
“As long as you are here, you may as well take a little time for drinks,” Seiji said, inviting the young man. Whereat he began to recount his meeting with Shinsuké’s father.
The boatman had taken this evening a fare to a restaurant on the Daionji-mae, Asakusa. Taking chance of this trip, he called on Shinsuké’s parents at their home, not far from there, and got his father to come out here, which had given him as good opportunity as he could hope for. He went over the ground again with the old man, and had the thing thrashed out, well and proper. It would be hard to forgive the boy who had seduced his master’s daughter, said the father, but if the pair should stay away in disgrace, it would mean even adding to the wrongs done to the house of Suruga-ya, which he would not like to see. Should the young ones kill themselves in despair, the master’s family would lose its only heiress and go out of existence, even if the father were not to take his own sorrow into reckoning. When he thought of that side of the affair, he did not wish to hold out too strongly against them, though he realized that it would not be befitting that he should give his consent, or say one way or the other before the master of the Suruga-ya should have his say about it, as it properly should be. Therefore, the father would presume only so much as to say this, that if the Suruga-ya folk meant to forgive and forget about the thing, he was ready to let his son marry into their family, even though his own family would thereby pass out; for, he felt he should place the master’s interest before his own. In fact, if he had not had to consider Seiji’s good offices and ideas about the affair, the father said that he would surely, according to the boatman’s account, ferret out his son, if he had to go to the farthest ends of the world, and tear him to pieces. “Feel for my old heart,”—the father was quoted to have said, before he had it out in a man’s cry, no longer able to check his bitter heart. Whereupon, Seiji tried to appease him by making him see things from some other angle than where he was dead set.
“Forgive whatever wrong your son has done—for my sake—just to save my face,” Seiji’s appeal followed, according to himself. “If you have brought yourself round so far in the matter, your forgiveness is the only thing now in the way of settling, for I have practically got the Suruga-ya people to the point of giving theirs.”
When the talk had at length come to be closed over a drink of peace, Seiji said, he manoeuvred to make suggestion that the young man be brought over here that the father and son might be happy to see each other. It would give the old man a chance to give his boy a talk so he should do no more misconduct. “Not right or in order that I should do so now and here,” the father was said to have insistently remarked, in turning down the suggested idea, until he had finally to give way, almost in spite of himself, to the boatman’s wish. So, he had waited, and waited pretty long; but, because Shinsuké was late and because the father who was a busy man always, had so much on hand just now, with the year-end close at hand, felt he could afford to sit here and while away no more time. So, he had gone, it was said, only a minute before Shinsuké came, despite repeated entreaty on the part of the boatman.
“See, such is the heart of a father!” Seiji commented. And those words seemed to quicken the young man to a keener sense of the wrongs of which he was guilty and of the old heart that was almost too good—a revelation, as he was led to feel. He drooped his head, bent himself low upon his hands placed down in front, in an attitude of humble gratitude; tears trickled down on his bent knees.
“Now, come to think
