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My curiosity brought me, the next day, to the Kagamiga Ike, a pool of water, not more than half a mile in circumference, by an actual survey, but looking immeasurably larger, when seen through openings in the brushwood, embowering its zigzag water-edge. I left it to my feet to take me where they liked, and I stopped when they came to a halt at a spot close to and falling into water, determined not to move till I got sick of it. Lucky that I could indulge in a whim like this; for in Tokyo I would be run over by a tram car, if not sternly chased away by a policeman. Ah! the city is a place where they make a beggar of a peaceful citizen, and pay a high salary to detectives who are all but boss pickpockets!

I sat on a damp cushion, which I found in incipient Spring grass, satisfied that I was in the bosom of nature, where neither wealth nor power could disturb me, and where I could heartily laugh at the folly of Timon’s wrath. I then took out and lighted a cigarette, and as a streak of smoke from the match took the shape of a dragon with its tail tapering to a line, and vanished in a moment, I drew nearer to the water edge. I looked into the clear and placid water of the pond and saw some slender weeds reposing as in eternal peace in its not necessarily unfathomable depth. Unlike the shear grass on the bank which moved in the breeze, the weeds down in the bottom were doomed, I fancied, never to stir till their surrounding water moved in ripples, an event, which in all appearance, seemed never to come. Possessed of willingness to be animate, but imprisoned in the watery dungeon, they appeared to have been waiting in vain, morning after morning, and evening after evening, for an opportunity to be sported with, and eking out a life of forced immobility, unable to die. I picked up a couple of pebbles and dropped one of them into the water. I saw a couple or three of the thin stalks of weeds move wearily, as some bubbles came up to the surface; but the next moment more bubbles hid them from sight, as if they must not be seen in motion. I threw in the other pebble, with some force this time; but the poor resigned thing would not respond to my efforts to awaken them, and I left the place and walked a little way up the slow incline.

A huge tree stood over my new position of vantage, screening me from the sun and making me feel chilly. Near the water’s edge, on the other side of the pond, was an overhanging camellia tree in full bloom. There is something very heavy and dull in the green of camellia leaves, even when seen in the sunshine, and I would have never known this particular plant but for its blood red flowers, which are never attractive, though fiery and striking. I never look at camellia flowers in a deep forest or mountain without wishing that I had not seen them; their red is not a common red, but a red with something weird in it like a she-demon in a fair woman’s mask, who fascinates you with her black eyes and beauty and breathes poison into your pores before you know it. The pear blossoms in rain never fail to arouse a sentiment of pity; the aronia in pale moon light awakens love; but the camellia’s cheerless red bespeaks a dark poison and something ominous.

As I was looking at those dark red flowers, as if under a spell, one of them fell into the water below, absolutely the only thing in motion in the still Spring day. Presently another dropped. The eerie thing about the camellia flower is that it never breaks up when it falls, as do most other flowers, but keeps compactly together, never to let its secret out, as it were. But one more fell, followed by another, after an interval, by still another, and still another, like the minute gun. Surely, I thought, the whole surface of the pond would turn red, by and by. I fancied the water looked slightly reddish already where the flowers were floating. Would they ever sink? Their red would melt, they would rot, become mud and fill up the pool, until there would be no more Kagamiga Ike, but a dry land after thousands of years. Hoy! one more extra-big blood red flower fell, and drop, drop, drop, followed by others, never ceasing to pass into eternity.

I now became seized with a queer idea, how it would look to paint a pond like this, with a beautiful woman floating in its water. I went back to the spot where I first stopped and there continued to think on the imaginary picture. Then with a tingling sensation, rushed back to my memory, the joking remark of Nami-san of the hot spring hotel, yesterday, that she should like to have me paint her dead, but floating with a pleasant face in the water. Suppose, I thought, I made her float in the water under that camellia. I wondered if I could make my brush tell that the blood red flowers were forever dropping, dropping, dropping into the water on her, and she was forever lying in her watery bed, in her eternal peaceful repose. But it was no easy matter, I told myself, to give expression to the idea of superhuman eternity, without rising above the level of mortal humanity.

Besides, the greatest difficulty lay in the choice of the face. Nami-san, with her usual expression of a discordant mixture of derision, impetuosity and soft heart, would never do, I thought. The face must bear no trace of mental or physical agony; but one with effulgent lightheartedness would be worse. Perhaps I had better borrow another woman’s face; but the racking of my head revealed to me none to fit my imaginary picture, so that I felt that it must be Nami-san, after all. Yet there was something lacking in her to suit my purpose, and the tantalising part of it was how to make up for that something, it being impossible to work my whilom fancy into it to fill up what was lacking. How would it do to give the face a touch of jealousy? But that would make it look too uneasy. How about hatred, then? That would again be too strong. Anger? No, it would spoil the whole effect. Resentment for some particular cause is sometimes poetical and acceptable; but as an every day feeling, it is too commonplace.

I thought and thought and thought, and it suddenly flashed upon me that what was missing from Nami-san was pity and compassion. Compassion is a feeling unknown to the gods, and yet is one that makes man as near gods as possible. This was one sentiment which I had never yet seen reflected in Nami-san, and I was convinced that my picture would become an accomplished fact, the moment I saw it aroused by some impulse or other and flashed across her handsome face. For the moment, however, I had absolutely no idea as to when or if ever, I should have the good fortune to see it in her.

A bantering sort of smile and a knitted brow bespeaking an eager desire to get the better of you are the ever constant features of her face and nothing can be done with them only. Hark! A rustling sound as of somebody wading through dry leaves came, and the mental plan of my picture, two-thirds of which I had finished forming went to pieces. Looking up, I saw a man in tight sleeved kimono, loaded with some faggots on his back, coming through the creeping bamboo growths towards the Kaikanji, apparently from the neighbouring hill.

“Fine weather, Sir,” said the man to me, taking off a towel from his head. He made a bow, and as he did so, a flash from a sharpened hatchet, stuck in his belt, caught my eyes. He was a sturdily built men of about forty, with a face I remembered seeing somewhere. He spoke to me familiarly:

“Danna paints, too?” I had my colour-box open by me.

“Yes, I have come out here, thinking I might make a picture of this pond. This is a very lonely place; nobody comes round.”

“Yes, it is very much in the mountain.⁠ ⁠… Danna, you had a time of it in rain, on that pass. I am sure, it was a bad toiling along you had that time.”

“Eh? why, yes, you are the mago-san I saw, then?”

“Yes. I gather faggots as you see and take them down to the town to sell.” Gembey took his load down from his back and sat on it. His hand brought out a tobacco pouch, a very ancient affair, that refused to tell whether it was of leather or of imitation leather. I gave him a lighted match and said:

“It must be a great job for you to cross a place like that, every day?”

“No, Danna, I am used to it. Besides I don’t do it every day, but only once in three days, and sometimes four days.”

“For myself, I should be excused even for once in four days.”

“Aha, ha, ha, ha. It is hard on my pony, and I generally make it four days or so.”

“That is, you think more of your horse than yourself, eh? Ha, ha, ha, ha!”

“Not quite that.⁠ ⁠…”

“By the way, this pond looks very old. Have you any idea, how old it is?”

“This has been here from olden times.”

“From olden times? How old?”

“Well, from a very long time ago.”

“From a very long time ago, I see.”

“A very long time ago, anyway, from the time when the Jo-sama of Shiota threw herself into it.”

“Shiota? That spa-hotel you mean?”

“Yes.”

“You say the O-Jo-san drowned herself here? But she is alive, very much alive there?”

“No, not that Jo-sama, but a Jo-sama of long, long ago.”

“Long, long ago? About when?”

“Well, a Jo-sama of very great long ago.⁠ ⁠…”

“What made that Jo-sama of so long ago throw herself into water?”

“That Jo-sama was, it is said, as beautiful as the present Jo-sama, Danna-sama.”

“Yes?”

“One day there came along a bonroji.⁠ ⁠…”

“Bonroji? You mean that begging minstrel that used to come round of old, playing his shakuhachi pipe?”

“Yes, that shakuhachi bonroji. While this bonroji was stopping at Squire Shiota’s house, the beautiful Jo-sama took a fancy to him. Would you call it fate or what? Anyhow, she said she must have him, and cried.”

“Cried? You don’t say!”

“But the Squire would not have a bonroji for his son-in-law, and drove away the party.”

“Drove away the bonroji?”

“Yes. The Jo-sama ran out of the house after him, and coming here, she threw herself into the water from where that yonder pine tree is standing. The whole place went into an awful excitement then. It is said that the young Jo-sama had, at the time, a mirror with her, and the pond has since come to be called Kagamiga Ike. We still call this the Mirror Pond.”

“Oh, the pond has made a grave, already, at least for one person?”

“A very scandalous affair, indeed.”

“This was about how many Squires back, do you know?”

“It is said to be a very long time back, and⁠ ⁠… it is between you and I, Danna-san.”

“What?”

“Every generation has had its mad one born in that Shiota family.”

“Oh?”

“A curse must be on that house. They are all saying that the present Jo-sama is getting queer of late.”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha. That seems improbable.”

“You don’t think so? But let me tell you that her mother had a touch of it, too.”

“Is the old lady there?”

“No, she died last year.”

“Hum,” I said, looking at a thin cord of smoke rising from live tobacco ashes, Gembey emptied on the ground, and then closed my mouth. The man went away with the faggots on his back.

I had come out on my unhuman tour to do some painting. But what with my thinking and musing, what with being made to listen to old tales, I knew there would be no picture, no matter how many days I might be at it. This very day I was at the pond with my colour-box and tripod, and I thought I owed it to myself to make a picture of the place, somehow or other. I sat on my tripod and began to make a visual survey of the pool and its surroundings, to make up my mind, on how much of the scenery I should take into my picture. I knew my materials were pine trees, giant-leaved creeping bamboos, rocks and a mirror-like pool of water.

The question was, how much of them should be covered in my canvas. The creeping bamboos were growing quite close to the edge of the water, and some of the rocks were ten feet high, while the pine trees were scraping the sky and cast their shadows into the water far and long, so much so that I could not see how I might take them all on my canvas. I had half made up my mind that I should paint only the reflections of the waters in the pond, feeling almost certain that the novel idea would astonish the people. But then the astonishment must be one arising from the sense of admiration and appreciation for the substantial artistic value of the production. How to solve this part of the problem occupied my attention next. Naturally, my eyes directed themselves, to the reflections in the pond.

Strangely enough no definite picture would come from the study of shadows only, and it was irresistible that I should try to make something by following the watery reflections back to their originals on land. My eyes were closely studying the ten foot rock, from its lowest point in the water to its body above, when I felt myself under the spell of a fairy’s wand, just as they had travelled to the summit of the cliff. I saw there a face in the struggling rays of setting sun that stole through the leafy screen and were faintly falling on the darkish top of the rock, the face of the woman, who had surprised me as a midnight shadow, or a vision, who had surprised me in her wedding gown, and had surprised me outside the bathroom! My eyes refused to turn elsewhere, as if rooted to the centre of the pale face of the woman who was standing fixedly on the rock, gently straightening herself up to her full height. Oh! that instant! I jumped on my feet. But the apparition had vanished, nimbly hopping down the other side of the rock and as she did so, I thought I perceived something red which resembled the camellia in her sash. The declining sun, slanting closely over tree tops, was faintly dyeing the trunks of the great pines, and below the creeping bamboos looked greener than ever. I was once more taken by surprise.