“Are you there?” I said again. The ejaculation startled, this time, a hen and her lord, which awoke clucking on a mortar, on which they had been standing bulged and asleep. I was glad to find fire going in a clay furnace, part of which had its colour changed by the rain that had been falling a minute ago. A teakettle was hanging from a suspender over the furnace. It was black with smoke, too black, indeed, to tell whether it was earthen or silver.
Receiving no answer, I took the liberty of walking into the shop and sitting on a bench before the fire, and this made the fowls flap their wings and hop from the mortar onto the raised and matted floor and they would have gone through the inner room had it not been for the screens. The birds clucked and cackled in alarm as if they thought I were a fox or a cur.
Presently footsteps were heard, a paper screen slid open, and out came an old woman, as I knew somebody would, with a fire going, and money lying scattered about. This was somewhat different from the city, that a woman could, with no concern, be away, leaving her shop to take care of itself and it was at any rate, unlike the twentieth century, that I could go into the shop and sit on a bench uninvited to wait, wait and wait. All this “unhuman” condition of things delighted me immensely. What charmed me most was, however, the look of the aged shopkeeper who had come out.
I discovered in her, living, the aged, masked dame of Takasago whom I saw at the Hosho Noh theatre, two or three years ago. I snapped that dame’s image into my mind’s camera at the time as most fascinating, wondering how an old woman could look so gentle and reverentially attractive. I say, I saw in flesh and blood this Noh figure in the lowly shopkeeper bowing before me. In response to my apologetic remark that I had taken possession of her bench in her absence, she said very civilly:
“I did not know that you had come in, Danna-sama.”4
“Had been raining rather hard?”
“Bad weather, Danna-sama, you must have had a hard time of it. Why you are drenching wet. Wait, I will make a big fire and let you dry yourself.”
“Thank you. Put just a little more wood there, and I shall warm and dry myself. The rest has made me feel cold.”
We kept on talking about the quietness of the place, the uguisu,5 and so on. Out came my sketch book, and I made a hasty picture of the old woman, as she worked at the fire. The rain had stopped, and the sky cleared up. I saw the “Hobgoblin Cliff” by turning my eyes in the direction towards which my good woman pointed. I glanced at the cliff and then at the woman, and last of all I looked at them both half and half. Of the impressions of old women carved permanently in my head, there were that of the face of the Takasago dame of the Noh mask, and that of the she-spirit of the mountain drawn by Rosetsu. The Rosetsu picture has made me think that an ideal old woman is a weird creature and that she should be seen only among autumn tinted trees or else in cold moonlight. But on seeing the mask of the Takasago dame I was astonished at the extent to which the aged of the other sex could be made to look so sweet. I have since thought she could, with her warm and graceful expression, ornament a golden screen, be a figure in a balmy Spring breeze or that she could go well, even with cherry blossoms. As I looked at my homely dressed hostess of motherly kindness, with a beaming light on her face, I fancied she made a picture better in keeping with the Spring scenery of the mountain, than with the “Hobgoblin Cliff,” she was pointing at, with one hand shading her eyes. I had almost finished sketching her when her pose broke. It was disconcerting, and with chagrin I held my book to the fire to dry.
“You look hale and hearty, O-Bah-san.”6
“Yes, thank you, Danna-sama. I can sew; I can spin hemp.”
She added triumphantly, “I can grind rice for dumpling flour!” I felt I would like to see her work at the mill stones. However such a request was out of place, and I changed the topic of conversation by asking her if it was not more than two and a half miles to Nakoi.
“No, Danna-sama, about two miles they say. You are going to the hot spring there, then?”
“I may stop there a while, if the place is not crowded. Or rather I should say if I am in the mood.”
“No crowding, I am sure, Danna-sama. The place has been almost deserted since the war (Russo-Japanese) broke out. The spa hostelry is all but closed.”
“Well, well. They won’t let me stop there then.”
“Oh, yes, they will any time, Danna-sama, if you just ask them.”
“There is only one hotel there; isn’t that so?”
“Yes, Danna-sama, ask for Shiota and anybody will tell you. Squire Shiota is a rich man of the village and one doesn’t know to call the place which, a hot-spring resort or the old gentleman’s pleasure retreat.”
“Is that so? Guest or no guest makes no difference to him then?”
“Danna-sama is going there for the first time?”
“No, not quite. I was there once
