The professor thought it strange that the death of the emperor of a country should bring so much sorrow even to the children. It was not only of the question of the relation existing between the imperial house and the people that he was made to think. The impulsive expression of their emotions by occidentals, which had impressed him ever since he came to the West, now surprised, as if it were something new, this professor, a Japanese and a believer in Bushidō. He had never forgotten the feeling, seemingly compounded of suspicion and sympathy, that he experienced at that time. Conversely, he now felt precisely the same degree of surprise at this lady’s not weeping. But a second discovery followed on the heels of the first. It was just as their conversation, after having gone from reminiscences of the dead youth into details of his daily life, was about to turn back again to more reminiscences. The Korean fan chanced to slip from the professor’s hand and fell of a sudden on the marquetry floor. The conversation, of course, was not so urgent as not to permit of a momentary interruption. So, bending forward from his chair and looking down, he stretched out his hand toward the floor. The fan was lying beneath the little table just beside the lady’s white tabi concealed in her slippers.
Then he chanced to notice the lady’s knees. On them, rested her hands holding the handkerchief. Of course this alone was no discovery. But at the same instant he realized that her hands were trembling fearfully. And he noticed that, probably due to her endeavor to suppress the agitation of her emotions, her hands, as they trembled, grasped the handkerchief on her knees so hard that they all but tore it in two. Finally he perceived that the embroidered edge of the wrinkled silk handkerchief moved between her delicate fingers as if stirred by a light breeze. The lady smiled with her face, indeed, but the truth was that she had been weeping with her whole body from the first.
When the professor had picked up the fan and raised his face, there was an expression on it which had not been there before. It was a very complicated expression, as if a reverent feeling at having seen what he should not have seen and a certain satisfaction arising from the consciousness of that feeling had been exaggerated by more or less theatricality.
“Ah, even I who have no children can understand your grief perfectly,” said the professor in a low voice full of feeling, tilting his head back a little as if dazzled by something.
“Thank you. But, whatever we say, it’s beyond help now, so—”
The lady lowered her head the least little bit. A bright smile beamed from her unclouded face as before.
It was two hours later. The professor had taken a bath, finished his supper, eaten some cherries for dessert and settled down comfortably in the cane chair on the veranda.
The twilight of the long summer evening lingered on and, in the large veranda, with its glass windows wide open, there was yet no sign of darkness falling. The professor, with his left knee crossed over his right and his head resting on the back of the chair, was gazing at the tassels of the Gifu lantern in the dim light. Though he had that same book of Strindberg’s in his hand, he appeared not yet to have read another page of it. That was natural. His head was still full of the brave behavior of Nishiyama Atsuko.
During supper, he had told his wife the whole story. And he had praised it as an illustration of the Bushidō of the women of Japan. On hearing it, this lover of Japan and the Japanese could not but sympathize. He had been pleased to find an eager listener in her. His wife, the lady and the Gifu lantern—these three now floated in his consciousness with a certain ethical background.
I do not know how long he was absorbed in such agreeable reflections. But while still in their grasp, he suddenly remembered that he had been asked to send a contribution to a certain magazine. Under the caption, “Letters to the Youth of Today,” that magazine was getting together the opinions on general morality of distinguished men all over the country. Using that day’s incident as material, he would write and send his impressions at once, he thought, and scratched his head a little.
The hand with which the professor scratched his head was the one in which he held the book. Becoming aware of the book, which he had up till now neglected, he opened it where he had inserted the card a while before at the page he had already begun to read. Just then the maid came and lighted the Gifu lantern above his head, so it was not very difficult for him to read the fine type. He cast his eyes casually on the page without any great desire to read. Strindberg said,
“In my youth, people told about Madame Heiberg’s handkerchief, a story which had probably come out of Paris. It was about her double performance of tearing her handkerchief in two with her hands while a smile played over her face. Now we call this claptrap.”
The professor put the book down on his knees. As he put it down open, the card with the name Nishiyama Atsuko on it still lay between its pages. But what was in his mind was no longer the lady. Nor was it either his wife or Japanese civilization. It was a nondescript something that threatened to break the calm harmony of these. The stage trick that Strindberg had scorned was
