Chương Chương 7 · HARU

. HARU

U

Haru was brought up, chiefly at home, in that old-fashioned way

which produced one of the sweetest types of woman the world has

ever seen. This domestic education cultivated simplicity of

heart, natural grace of manner, obedience, and love of duty as

they were never cultivated but in Japan. Its moral product was

something too gentle and beautiful for any other than the old

Japanese society: it was not the most judicious preparation for

the much harsher life of the new,--in which it still survives.

The refined girl was trained for the condition of being

theoretically at the mercy of her husband. She was taught never

to show jealousy, or grief, or anger,--even under circumstances

compelling all three; she was expected to conquer the faults of

her lord by pure sweetness. In short, she was required to be

almost superhuman,--to realize, at least in outward seeming, the

ideal of perfect unselfishness. And this she could do with a

husband of her own rank, delicate in discernment,--able to divine

her feelings, and never to wound them.

Haru came of a much better family than her husband; and she was a

little too good for him, because he could not really understand

her. They had been married very young, had been poor at first,

and then had gradually become well-off, because Haru's husband

was a clever man of business. Sometimes she thought he had loved

her most when they were less well off; and a woman is seldom

mistaken about such matters.

She still made all his clothes; and he commended her needle-work.

She waited upon his wants, aided him to dress and undress, made

everything comfortable for him in their pretty home; bade him a

charming farewell as he went to business in the morning, and

welcomed him upon his return; received his friends exquisitely;

managed his household matters with wonderful economy, and seldom

asked any favors that cost money. Indeed she scarcely needed such

favors; for he was never ungenerous, and liked to see her

daintily dressed,--looking like some beautiful silver moth robed

in the folding of its own wings,--and to take her to theatres and

other places of amusement. She accompanied him to

pleasure-resorts famed for the blossoming of cherry-trees in

spring, or the shimmering of fireflies on summer nights, or the

crimsoning of maples in autumn. And sometimes they would pass a

day together at Maiko, by the sea, where the pines seem to sway

like dancing girls; or an afternoon at Kiyomidzu, in the old, old

summer-house, where everything is like a dream of five hundred

years ago,--and where there is a great shadowing of high woods,

and a song of water leaping cold and clear from caverns, and

always the plaint of flutes unseen, blown softly in the antique

way,--a tone-caress of peace and sadness blending, just as the

gold light glooms into blue over a dying sun.

Except for such small pleasures and excursions, Haru went out

seldom. Her only living relatives, and also those of her husband,

were far away in other provinces, and she had few visits to make.

She liked to be at home, arranging flowers for the alcoves or for

the gods, decorating the rooms, and feeding the tame gold-fish of

the garden-pond, which would lift up their heads when they saw

her coming.

No child had yet brought new joy or sorrow into her life. She

looked, in spite of her wife's coiffure, like a very young girl;

and she was still simple as a child,--notwithstanding that

business capacity in small things which her husband so admired

that he often condescended to ask her counsel in big things.

Perhaps the heart then judged for him better than the pretty

head; but, whether intuitive or not, her advice never proved

wrong. She was happy enough with him for five years,--during

which time he showed himself as considerate as any young Japanese

merchant could well be towards a wife of finer character than his

own.

Then his manner suddenly became cold,--so suddenly that she felt

assured the reason was not that which a childless wife might have

reason to fear. Unable to discover the real cause, she tried to

persuade herself that she had been remiss in her duties; examined

her innocent conscience to no purpose; and tried very, very hard

to please. But he remained unmoved. He spoke no unkind words,--

though she felt behind his silence the repressed tendency to

utter them. A Japanese of the better class is not very apt to be

unkind to his wife in words. It is thought to be vulgar and

brutal. The educated man of normal disposition will even answer a

wife's reproaches with gentle phrases. Common politeness, by the

Japanese code, exacts this attitude from every manly man;

moreover, it is the only safe one. A refined and sensitive woman

will not long submit to coarse treatment; a spirited one may even

kill herself because of something said in a moment of passion,

and such a suicide disgraces the husband for the rest of his

life. But there are slow cruelties worse than words, and safer,--

neglect or indifference, for example, of a sort to arouse

jealousy. A Japanese wife has indeed been trained never to show

jealousy; but the feeling is older than all training,--old as

love, and likely to live as long. Beneath her passionless mask

the Japanese wife feels like her Western sister,--just like that

sister who prays and prays, even while delighting some evening

assembly of beauty and fashion, for the coming of the hour which

will set her free to relieve her pain alone.

Haru had cause for jealousy; but she was too much of a child to

guess the cause at once; and her servants too fond of her to

suggest it. Her husband had been accustomed to pass his evenings

in her company, either at home or elsewhere. But now, evening

after evening, he went out by himself. The first time he had

given her some business pretexts; afterwards he gave none, and

did not even tell her when he expected to return. Latterly, also,

he had been treating her with silent rudeness. He had become

changed,--"as if there was a goblin in his heart,"--the servants

said. As a matter of fact he had been deftly caught in a snare

set for him. One whisper from a geisha had numbed his will; one

smile blinded his eyes. She was far less pretty than his wife;

but she was very skillful in the craft of spinning webs,--webs of

sensual delusion which entangle weak men; and always tighten more

and more about them until the final hour of mockery and ruin.

Haru did not know. She suspected no wrong till after her

husband's strange conduct had become habitual,--and even then

only because she found that his money was passing into unknown

hands. He had never told her where he passed his evenings. And

she was afraid to ask, lest he should think her jealous. Instead

of exposing her feelings in words, she treated him with such

sweetness that a more intelligent husband would have divined all.

But, except in business, he was dull. He continued to pass his

evenings away; and as his conscience grew feebler, his absences

lengthened. Haru had been taught that a good wife should always

sit up and wait for her lord's return at night; and by so doing

she suffered from nervousness, and from the feverish conditions,

that follow sleeplessness, and from the lonesomeness of her

waiting after the servants, kindly dismissed at the usual hour,

had left her with her thoughts. Once only, returning very late,

her husband said to her: "I am sorry you should have sat up so

late for me; do not wait like that again!" Then, fearing he might

really have been pained on her account, she laughed pleasantly,

and said: "I was not sleepy, and I am not tired; honorably please

not to think about me." So he ceased to think about her,--glad to

take her at her word; and not long after that he stayed away for

one whole night. The next night he did likewise, and a third

night. After that third night's absence he failed even to return

for the morning meal; and Haru knew the time had come when her

duty as a wife obliged her to speak.

She waited through all the morning hours, fearing for him,

fearing for herself also; conscious at last of the wrong by which

a woman's heart can be most deeply wounded. Her faithful servants

had told her something; the rest she could guess. She was very

ill, and did not know it. She knew only that she was angry--

selfishly angry, because of the pain given her, cruel, probing,

sickening pain. Midday came as she sat thinking how she could say

least selfishly what it was now her duty to say,--the first words

of reproach that would ever have passed her lips. Then her heart

leaped with a shock that made everything blur and swim before her

sight in a whirl of dizziness,--because there was a sound of

kuruma-wheels and the voice of a servant calling:

"_Honorable-return-is!_"

She struggled to the entrance to meet him, all her slender body

a-tremble with fever and pain, and terror of betraying that pain.

And the man was startled, because instead of greeting him with

the accustomed smile, she caught the bosom of his silk robe in

one quivering little hand,--and looked into his face with eyes

that seemed to search for some shred of a soul,--and tried to

speak, but could utter only the single word, "_Anata(1)?_" Almost

in the same moment her weak grasp loosened, her eyes

closed with a strange smile; and even before he could put out his

arms to support her, she fell. He sought to lift her. But

something in the delicate life had snapped. She was dead.

There were astonishments, of course, and tears, and useless

callings of her name, and much running for doctors. But she lay

white and still and beautiful, all the pain and anger gone out of

her face, and smiling as on her bridal day.

Two physicians came from the public hospital,--Japanese military

surgeons. They asked straight hard questions,--questions that cut

open the self of the man down to the core. Then they told him

truth cold and sharp as edged steel,--and left him with his dead.

The people wondered he did not become a priest,--fair evidence

that his conscience had been awakened. By day he sits among his

bales of Kyoto silks and Osaka figured goods,--earnest and

silent. His clerks think him a good master; he never speaks

harshly. Often he works far into the night; and he has changed

his dwelling-place. There are strangers in the pretty house where

Haru lived; and the owner never visits it. Perhaps because he

might see there one slender shadow, still arranging flowers, or

bending with iris-grace above the goldfish in his pond. But

wherever he rest, sometime in the silent hours he must see the

same soundless presence near his pillow,--sewing, smoothing,

softly seeming to make beautiful the robes he once put on only to

betray. And at other times--in the busiest moments of his busy

life--the clamor of the great shop dies; the ideographs of his

ledger dim and vanish; and a plaintive little voice, which the

gods refuse to silence, utters into the solitude of his heart,

like a question, the single word,--"_Anata?_"

(1) "Thou?"

VIII