The Dragon Painter | Page 6

your honorable
face."
"Is it indeed so long?" said the other. "Time has the wings of a
dragon-fly!"
Ando had brought with him a roll, apparently of papers, tied up in
yellow cloth. This parcel he put carefully behind him on the matted
floor. He then drew from his kimono sleeve a pink-bordered foreign
pocket-handkerchief, and began to mop his damp forehead. Kano's
politeness could not hide, entirely, a shudder of antipathy. He hurried
into new speech. "And where, if 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