The Dragon Painter | Page 6

it is not rude to ask, has my friend Ando sojourned during the long absence?"
"Chiefly among the mountains of Kiu Shiu," answered the other.
"Kiu Shiu," murmured the artist. "I wandered there in youth and have thought always to return. The rocks and cliffs are of great beauty. I remember well one white, thin waterfall that flung itself out like a laugh, but never reached a thing so dull as earth. Midway it was splintered upon a sunbeam, and changed into rainbows, pearls, and swallows!"
"I know it excellently well," said Uchida. "Indeed I have been zealous to preserve it, chiefly for your sake."
"Preserve it? What can you mean?"
"I have become a government inspector of mines," explained Uchida, in some embarrassment. "I thought you knew. There is a rich coal deposit near that waterfall."
"Ando! Ando!" groaned the old man, "you were once an artist! The foreigners are tainting us all."
"I love art still," said Ando, "but I make a better engineer. And--I beseech you to overlook my vulgarity--I am getting rich."
Kano groaned again. "Oh, this foreign influence! It is the curse of modern Japan! Love of money is starting a dry rot in the land of the gods. Success, material power, money,--all of them illusions, miasma of the soul, blinding men to reality! Surely my karma was evil that I needed to be reborn into this age of death!"
Ando looked sympathetic and a little contrite. "Since we are indeed hopelessly of the present," ventured he, "may it not be as well to let the foreigners teach us their methods of success?"
"Success?" cried Kano, almost angrily. "What do they succeed in except the grossest material gains? There is no humanity in them. Love of beauty dies in the womb. Shall we strive to become as dead things?"
"The love of beauty will never perish in this land," said Ando more earnestly than he had yet spoken. "A Japanese loves Art as he loves life. Our rich merchants become the best patrons of the artists."
"Patrons of the artists," echoed Kano, wearily. "You voice your own degradation, friend Ando. In the great days, who dared to speak of patronage to us. Emperors were artists and artists Emperors! It was to us that all men bowed."
"Yes, yes, that is honorably true," Ando hastened to admit. "And so would they in this age bow to you, if you would but allow it."
"I am not worthy of homage," said Kano, his head falling forward on his breast. "None knows this better than I,--and yet I am the greatest among them. Show me one of our young artists who can stand like Fudo in the flame of his own creative thought! There is none!"
"What you say is unfortunately true of the present Tokyo painters,--perhaps equally of Kioto and other large cities,--but----" Here Ando paused as if to arouse expectancy. Kano did not look up. "But," insisted the other, "may it not be possible that in some place far from the clamor of modern progress,--in some remote mountain pass,--maybe----"
Kano looked up now sharply enough. Apathy and indifference flared up like straws in a sudden flame of passion. He made a fierce gesture. "Not that, not that!" he cried. "I cannot bear it! Do not seek to give false life to a hope already dead. I am an old man. I have hoped and prayed too long. I must go down to my grave without an heir,--even an adopted heir,--for there is no disciple worthy to succeed!"
"Dear friend, believe that I would not willingly add to a grief like this. I assure you----" Ando was beginning, when his words were cut short by the entrance of Umè-ko. She bore a tray with cups, a tiny steaming tea-pot, and a dish heaped with cakes in the forms and tints of morning-glories. This offering she placed near Uchida; and then, retiring a few steps, bowed to the floor, drawing her breath inaudibly as a token of welcome and respect. Being merely a woman, old Kano did not think of presenting her. She left the room noiselessly as she had come. Ando watched every movement with admiration and a certain weighing of possibilities in his shrewd face. He nodded as if to himself, and leaned toward Kano.
"Was that not Kano Umè-ko, your daughter?"
"Yes," said the old man, gruffly; "but she is not a son."
"Fortunately for the eyes of men she is not," smiled Ando. "That is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and I have seen many. She welcomed me at the gate."
Kano, engaged in pouring tea, made no reply.
"Also, if current speech be true, she has great talent," persisted the visitor. "One can see genius burning like a soft light behind her face. I hear everywhere of her beauty and her fame."
"Oh, she does well,--even remarkably well for a woman," admitted Kano.