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Title: The Honorable Miss Moonlight
Author: Eaton, Winnifred
Language: English
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THE HONORABLE MISS MOONLIGHT
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: Frontispiece]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
HONORABLE
MISS MOONLIGHT
BY
ONOTO WATANNA
AUTHOR OF
“A JAPANESE NIGHTINGALE”
“TAMA” ETC.
[Illustration: Publisher’s Logo]
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
M C M X I I
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOKS BY
ONOTO WATANNA
THE HONORABLE MISS MOONLIGHT. Post
8vo net $1.00
A JAPANESE NIGHTINGALE. Illustrated.
Crown 8vo net 2.00
A JAPANESE BLOSSOM. Illustrated in color.
8vo net 2.00
THE WOOING OF WISTARIA. Illustrated. Post
8vo net 1.50
THE HEART OF HYACINTH. Illustrated in color.
Crown 8vo net 2.00
TAMA. Illustrated. Japan tint paper. Crown
8vo net 1.60
HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY HARPER & BROTHERS
-------
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1912
H-M
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO
J. W., L. W., AND E. McK.
IN REMEMBRANCE
OF KIND WORDS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE HONORABLE MISS MOONLIGHT
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE HONORABLE MISS MOONLIGHT
CHAPTER I
THE day had been long and sultry. It was the season of little heat, when
an all-encompassing humidity seemed suspended over the land. Sky and
earth were of one monotonous color, a dim blue, which faded to shadowy
grayness at the fall of the twilight.
With the approach of evening, a soothing breeze crept up from the river.
Its faint movement brought a measure of relief, and nature took on a
more animated aspect.
Up through the narrow, twisting roads, in and out of the never-ending
paths, the lights of countless jinrikishas twinkled, bound for the
Houses of Pleasure. Revelers called to each other out of the balmy
darkness. Under the quivering light of a lifted lantern, suspended for
an instant, faces gleamed out, then disappeared back into the darkness.
To the young Lord Saito Gonji the night seemed to speak with myriad
tongues. Like some finely tuned instrument whose slenderest string must
vibrate if touched by a breath, so the heart of the youth was stirred by
every appeal of the night. He heard nothing of the chatter and laughter
of those about him. For the time at least, he had put behind him that
sickening, deadening thought that had borne him company now for so long.
He was giving himself up entirely to the brief hour of joy, which had
been agreeably extended to him in extenuation of the long life of
thralldom yet to come.
It was in his sole honor that the many relatives and connections of his
family had assembled, joyously to celebrate the fleeting hours of youth.
For within a week the Lord Saito Gonji was to marry. Upon this pale and
dreamy youth the hopes of the illustrious house of Saito depended. To
him the august ancestors looked for the propagating of their honorable
seed. He was the last of a great family, and had been cherished and
nurtured for one purpose only.
With almost as rigid care as would have been bestowed upon a novitiate
priest, Gonji had been educated.
“Send the child you love upon a journey,” admonished the stern-hearted
Lady Saito Ichigo to her husband; and so at the early age of five the
little Gonji was sent to Kummumotta, there to be trained under the
strictest discipline known to the samourai. Here he developed in
strength and grace of body; but, seemingly caught in some intangible
web, the mind of the youth awoke not from its dreams. His arm had the
strength of the samourai, said his teachers, but his spirit and his
heart were those of the poet.
There came a period when he was placed in the Imperial University, and a
new life opened to the wondering youth. New laws, new modes of thought,
the alluring secrets of strange sciences, baffling and fascinating, all
opened their doors to the infatuated and eager Gonji. With the
enthusiasm born of his solitary years, the boy grasped avidly after the
ideals of the New Japan. His career in college was notable. In him
professor and student recognized the born leader and genius. He was to
do great things for Japan some day!
Then came a time when the education of the youth was abruptly halted,
and he was ordered to return to his home. While his mind was still
engaged in the fascinating employment of planning a career, his parents
ceremoniously presented him to Ohano, a girl he had known from childhood
and a distant relative of his mother’s family. Mechanically and
obediently the dazed Gonji found himself exchanging with the maiden the
first gifts of betrothal.
Ohano was plump, with a round, somewhat sullen face, a pouting,
full-lipped mouth, and eyes so small they seemed but mere slits in her
face. She had inherited the inscrutable, disdainful expression of her
lofty ancestors.
Though he had played with her as a child and had seen her upon every
occasion during his school vacations, Gonji looked at her now with new
eyes. As a little boy he had liked Ohano. She was his sole playmate, and
it had been his delight to tease her. Now, as he watched her stealthily,
he was consumed with a sense of unutterable despair. Could it be that
his fairest dreams were to end with Ohano?
Like every other Japanese youth, who knows that some day his proper mate
will be chosen and given to him, Gonji had conjured up a lovely,
yielding creature of the imagination, a gentle, smiling, mysterious Eve,
who, like a new world, should daily surprise and delight him. As he
looked at Ohano, sitting placidly and contentedly by his side, he was
conscious only of an inner tumult of rebellion and repulsion against the
chains they were forging inexorably about him and this girl. It was
impossible, he felt, to drag him nearer to her. The very thought
revolted, stunned him, and suddenly, rudely, he turned his back upon his
bride.
The relatives agreed that something should be done to offset the gloom
of the first stages of betrothal. It was suggested that the bridegroom
have a full week of freedom. As was the custom among many, he should for
the first time be introduced to the life of gaiety and pleasure that lay
outside the lofty, ancestral walls, the better, later, to appreciate the
calm and pure joys of home and family.
In single file the jinrikishas had been running along a narrow road
which overlooked city and bay. Now they swerved into shadowy by-paths
and plunged into the heart of the woods. A velvety darkness, through
which the drivers picked their way with caution, enwrapped them.
For some time the tingling music of samisen and drum close by had been
growing ever clearer. Suddenly the glimmer of many lights was seen, as
if suspended overhead. Almost unconsciously faces were raised, excited
breaths drawn in admiration and approval. Like a great sparkling jewel
hung in mid-air, the House of Slender Pines leaned over its wooded
terraces toward them.
Gay little mousmés, rubbing hands and knees together, ran to meet them
at the gate, kowtowing and hissing in obeisance. The note of a samisen
was heard; and a thin little voice, sweet, and incredibly high, broke
into song. Geishas, with great flowers in their hair, fell into a
posturing group, dancing with hand, head, and fan. Gonji watched them in
a fascinated silence, noting the minutest detail of their attire, their
expression, their speech. They belonged to a world which, till now, he
had not been permitted even to explore. Nay, till but recently he had
been rigidly guarded from even the slightest possible contact with these
little creatures of joy. Soon he was to be set in the niche destined for
him by his ancestors. Here was his sole opportunity to seize the
fleeting delights of youth.
A laughing-faced mousmé, red-lipped and with saucy, teasing eyes that
peeped at him from beneath veiled lashes, knelt to hold his sake-tray.
He leaned gravely toward the girl and examined her face with a curious
wonder; but her smile brought no response to the somewhat sad and somber
lips of the young man, nor did he even deign to sip the fragrant cup she
tendered.
An elder cousin offered some chaffing advice, and an hilarious uncle
suggested that the master of the house put his geishas upon parade; but
the father of Gonji roughly interposed, declaring that his son’s
thoughts, naturally, were elsewhere. It was so with all expectant
bridegrooms. His father’s words awoke the boy from his dreaming. He
turned very pale and trembled. His head drooped forward, and he felt an
irresistible inclination to cover his face with his hands. His father’s
voice sounded in gruff whisper at his ear:
“Pay attention. You see now the star of the night. It is the famous
Spider, spinning her web!”
As Gonji slowly raised his head and gazed like one spellbound at the
dancer, his father added, with a sudden vehemence:
“Take care, my son, lest she entrap thee, too, like the proverbial fly.”
A hush had fallen upon the gardens. Almost it seemed as if the tiny feet
of the dancer stirred not at all. Yet, with imperceptible advances, she
moved nearer and nearer to her fascinated audience. Above her flimsy
gown of sheerest veiling, which sprang like a web on all sides and above
her, her face shone with its marvelous beauty and allurement. Her lips
were apart, smiling, coaxing, teasing; and her eyes, wide and very
large, seemed to seek over the heads of her audience for the one who
should prove her prey. It was the final motion of the dance of the
Spider, the seeking for, the finding, the seizing of her imaginary
victim. Now the Spider’s eyes had ceased to wander. They were fixed
compellingly upon those of the Lord Saito Gonji.
He had arisen to his feet, and with a half-audible exclamation—a sound
of an indrawn sigh—he advanced toward the dancer. For a moment,
breathlessly, he stood close beside her. The subtle odor of her perfumed
hair and body stole like a charm over his senses. Her sleeve fluttered
against his hand for but the fraction of a moment, yet thrilled and
tormented him. He looked at the Spider with the eyes of one who sees a
new and radiant wonder. Then darkness came rudely between them. The
geisha’s face vanished with the light. He was standing alone, staring
into the darkness, his father’s voice droning meaninglessly in his ear.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II
HER real name was as poetical as the one she was known by was forbidding
and repelling. Moonlight, it was; though all the gay world which hovers
about a famous geisha, like flies over the honey-pot, knew her solely as
the “Spider.”
“Spider” she was called because of the peculiar dance she had
originated. It was against all classical precedents, but of so
exceptional a character that in a night, a single hour, as it were, she
found herself from a humble little apprentice the most celebrated geisha
in Kioto, that paradise of geishas.
It was a day of golden fortune for Matsuda, who owned the girl. She had
been bound to his service since the age of seven with bonds as drastic
as if the days of slavery still existed.
Harsh, cunning, even cruel to the many girls in his employ, Matsuda had
yet one vulnerable point. That was his overwhelming affection for the
geisha he had married, and she was afflicted with a malady of the brain.
Some said it was due to the death of her many children, all of whom had
succumbed to an infectious disease. From whatever misfortune, the gentle
Okusama, as they called her in the geisha-house, was at intervals
blank-minded. Still she, the harmless, gentle creature, was loved by the
geishas; and, as far as it lay in her power, she was their friend, and
often saved them from the wrath of Matsuda. It was into her empty bosom
the little Moonlight had crept and found a warm and loving home. With a
yearning as deep as though the child were her own, the wife of Matsuda
watched over the child. It was under her tutelage that Moonlight learned
all the arts of an accomplished geisha. In her time the wife of Matsuda
had been very famous, too, and no one knew better than she, soft of mind
and witless as she was at times, the dances and the songs of the
geisha-house.
Matsuda had watched with some degree of irritation, not unmixed with a
peculiar jealousy, his wife’s absorption in the tiny Moonlight. He did
not approve of gentle treatment toward a mere apprentice. It was only by
harsh measures that a girl could properly learn the severe profession.
Later, when she had mastered all the intricate arts and graces, then,
perhaps, one might prove lenient. It was no uncommon thing for a geisha
to be pampered and spoiled, but an apprentice, never!
However, the child seemed to make happier the lot of the beloved
Okusama, and there was nothing to be done about the matter.
Disliking the child, Matsuda nevertheless recognized from the first her
undoubted beauty, the thing which had induced him, in fact, to pay an
exceptional price to her guardians for her. He had little faith in her
future as a geisha, however, since his wife chose to pet and protect
her. How was it possible for her to learn from the poor, witless
Okusama? When the latter joyously jabbered of the little one’s wonderful
progress, Matsuda would smile or grunt surlily.
Then, one day, walking in the woods, he had come, unexpectedly, upon the
posturing child, tossing her little body from side to side like a
wind-blown flower, while his wife picked two single notes upon the
samisen. Matsuda watched them dumb-smitten. Was it possible, he asked
himself, that the Okusama had discovered what he had overlooked? But he
brushed the thought aside. These were merely the precocious antics of a
spoiled child. They would not be pretty in one grown to womanhood. There
was much to do in the geisha-house. The fame of his gardens must be kept
assiduously before the public. Matsuda had no time for the little
Moonlight, save, chidingly, to frown upon her when she was not in the
presence of the Okusama. And so, almost unobserved by the master of the
geisha-house, Moonlight came to the years of maidenhood.
One night the House of Slender Pines was honored by the unexpected
advent of most exalted guests. The chief geishas were absent at an
entertainment, and Matsuda was in despair. He was forced, consequently,
to put the novices into service, and while he bit his nails frenziedly
at the awkward movements of the apprentices, Moonlight slipped to his
side and whispered in his ear that she was competent to dance as
beautifully as the chief geishas. As he stared at her in wrathful
irritation, his wife glided to his other side and joined the girl in
pleading. Gruffly he consented. Matters could not be much worse. What
mattered it now? He was already disgraced in the eyes of the most high.
Well, then, let this pet apprentice do her foolish dance.
Moonlight seized her opportunity with the gay avidity of the gambler who
tosses his all upon a final chance. At the risk of meeting the fearful
displeasure of her master, the ridicule, disdain, and even hatred of the
older geishas, whom it was her duty to imitate, the girl danced before
the most critical audience in Kioto.
Her triumph was complete. It may have been the novelty or mystery of her
dance, the hypnotic perfection of her art; it may have been her own
surpassing beauty—no one sought to analyze the source of her peculiar
power. Before the smiling, coaxing witchery of her eyes and lips they
fell figuratively, and indeed literally, upon their knees.
She became the mad furore and fashion of the hour. Poets indited lyrics
to her respective features. Princes flung gifts at her feet. People
traveled from the several quarters of the empire to see her. And at this
most dangerous period of her career the young Lord Saito Gonji, last of
one of the most illustrious families in Japan, crossed her path.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER III
HIS honorable mother declared that Gonji was afflicted with a malady of
the stomach. She proffered warm drinks and poultices and sought to
induce him to remain in bed. Now that the long and severe years of
discipline had passed and her son was at last at home with her, all of
the natural mother within her, which had been repressed so long, yearned
over her only son. Even her cold and somewhat repelling manner showed a
softening.
Had he not been at this time absorbed in his own dreams, Gonji would
have met half-way the pathetic advances of his mother; but he was
oblivious to the change in her. He insisted politely that his health was
excellent, begged to be excused, and wandered off by himself.
His father, whose mighty business interests were in Tokio, abandoned
them for the time being and remained by his son’s side in Kioto,
following the young man assiduously, seeking vainly to arouse him from
the melancholy lethargy into which he had fallen. Deep in the heart of
the elder Lord Saito was the acute knowledge of what troubled his son,
for afflicted he undoubtedly was, as all the relatives unanimously and
officiously averred. Such a funereal countenance was unbefitting a
bridegroom. One would think the unhappy youth was being driven to his
tomb, rather than to the bridal bed!
The parents and relatives vied with each other in importuning the
unfortunate Gonji, and sought to distract him from what were evidently
his own morbid thoughts. Also they sought to entrap his confidence.
Gonji kept his counsel, and from day to day he grew paler, thinner, more
silent, and sad.
“Call in the services of the mightiest of honorable physicians and
surgeons,” ordered the Lady Saito. “It may be an operation will relieve
our son.”
Her husband, thoughtful, sad, a prey to an uneasy conscience, shook his
head dumbly.
“It is not possible for the honorable knife to efface a cancer of the
heart,” said he, sighing.
“Hasten the nuptials,” suggested the uncle of Ohano. “There is no
medicine which acts with as drastic force as a wife.”
This time the Lord Saito Ichigo was even more emphatic in negativing the
suggestion.
“There is time enough,” he asserted, gruffly. “I will not begrudge my
son at least the short and precious time which should precede the
ceremony. This is his period of diversion. It shall not be cut in half.”
The brusque words of the head of the Saito house aroused the ire of the
nearest relative of the bride. He said complainingly:
“It does not seem as if the honorable bridegroom desires to avail
himself of his prenuptial privileges. He does not seek the usual
diversions of youth at this time. Is it not unnatural to prefer
solitude?”
“It is a matter of choice,” contended the father of Gonji, with curt
pride.
“But if it injure his health, is it not the duty of the relatives to
assist him?”
“The gates of the saito are wide open. My son is not a prisoner. He is
at liberty to go whithersoever he pleases. It is apparent that his
pleasures lie not outside the ancestral home of his fathers.”
“That,” said the uncle of Ohano, suavely, “is because he still stumbles
in the period of adolescence. It is necessary he be instructed.”
The father of Gonji pondered the matter somberly, pulling with thumb and
forefinger at his lower lip. After a moment he said, with sudden
determination:
“You are right, Takedo Isami. Your superior suggestion is gratefully
received. Since my son will not seek the pleasures of youth, let us
bring them to our house. It is necessary immediately to arouse him from
a youthful despair which may tend to injure his health.”
He looked up and met the cunning eye of his prospective kinsman
regarding him with a peculiar expression. Ichigo added, gruffly but
sturdily:
“It would be an excellent programme to secure the services of the
honorable Spider of the House of Slender Pines. I pray you undertake the
matter for me. See Matsuda, the master of the house. Spare no expense in
the matter.”
The expression on Takedo’s face was now enigmatic. He emptied his pipe
slowly and with deliberation, as if in thought. Then solemnly he bobbed
his bald head, as if in assent. The two old men then arose, shaking
their skirts and hissing perfunctorily. Their bows were formal, and the
words of parting the usual friendly and polite ones; but each met the
eye of the other, and both understood; and, strangely, a sense of
antagonism arose between them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IV
SO it was in the honorable house of his father, and of the hundred
august ancestors whom they accused him of dishonoring, that Gonji again
saw the Spider.
Into the houses of the most exalted the geisha flutters with the free
familiarity of a pampered house pet. No festivity, however private, is
considered complete without her. She is as necessary as the flowers that
bedeck the house, the viands, and the sake.
Upon a humid night in the season of greatest heat, and in the glow of a
thousand fireflies, the Spider danced in the gardens of the house of
Saito. Her kimono was vermilion, embroidered with dragons of gold. Gold
too were her obi and her fan, and red and gold were the ornaments that
glistened like fire in her hair. Yet more brilliant, more sparklingly,
gleamed and shone the eyes of the dancer, and her scarlet lips were
redder than the poppies in her hair, and held an hypnotic allure for the
Lord Saito Gonji, watching her in a breathless silence that fairly
pained him.
Every gesture, every slightest flutter of her sleeve, her hand, her fan,
every smallest turn or motion of her bewitching head, was directed at
the guest of honor, the son and heir of the house of Saito. For him
alone she seemed to dance. To him she threw her joyous smiles, and, in
the end, when the dance was done, it was at his feet she knelt, raising
her naïvely coy, half-questioning glance. Then, very softly and with
gentle solicitation:
“At your sole honorable service, noble lord,” she said. “What is your
pleasure next?”
He said, like one awakening from some strange dream or trance:
“It is my pleasure, geisha, that you look into my eyes.”
She glanced up timidly, as if troubled and surprised. A wistfully joyous
light came into her dark eyes; then they remained unmovingly fixed upon
his. Very softly, that those about them might not hear, he whispered:
“I saw your face dimly in the firefly-light. I was possessed with but
one ambition—to look into your eyes!”
Her pretty head drooped so low that now it touched his knee. At the
contact he trembled and drew sharply away from her. Alarmed, fearing she
had unwittingly offended him, she raised her head and looked at him with
a mutely questioning glance. There was a cloud, dark and very
melancholy, upon the face of the one she had been ordered to entertain.
She thought of the instructions of Matsuda: that it should be her
paramount duty to beguile and distract the Lord Saito Gonji. Her fortune
for life might be made by succeeding in arousing him to a joyous mood.
But, lo! the one she sought to please drew back from her, gloomy,
troubled.
Her rapid rise to fame had not brought to the Spider the peculiar joy
she had anticipated. Fame carries ever with it its bitter savor, and,
although she had not alone become the darling of the celebrated
geisha-house, but had brought fame and fortune to her master, many of
the things she had most cared for she had been obliged to forego in her
new position as star of the House of Slender Pines.
No longer was it possible for her to be shielded by the loving arms of
the Okusama. Out into the broadest limelight even the delighted Okusama
had pushed her, and this blinding light entailed a thousand duties of
which she had only vaguely heard from the patronizing elder geishas. She
had ceased to be the cuddled and petted little Moonlight, loved and
stroked and tossed about by the geishas, because of her beauty and
ingenuous wit. Suddenly she had become the Spider! It was a new and
fearful name that terrified her.
Matsuda, proud of her success, and at last completely won over,
surrounded her with every luxury. So far he had forced upon the girl
none of the odious exactions often demanded of the geishas by their
masters, even though the law had defined the exact services to which he
was legally entitled.
A thousand lovers a geisha might have, said the unwritten law, but to
possess one alone was fatal! She must place a guard of iron before her
heart! A geisha must sip at love as the bee culls the honey from the
blossom, lingering but a moment over each. The rivers and the many pits
of death were filled with the bodies of the hapless ones who had gone
outside this law, who had dared to permit the passionate heart to escape
beyond the prescribed bounds.
Moonlight, with all the witching arts of the geisha at her finger-tips,
with a beauty as rare and mysterious as though she were a princess of
some new world, had found it thus far an easy task to follow the rules
laid down for her class. Like a fragile flower that must not be touched
lest its bloom be soiled, the master of the geisha-house jealously
protected his star from all possible contamination. She was held out as
a lure to captivate and draw to his house the rich and noble ones; but,
like some precious jewel in a casket, she was but to be seen, not
touched! Matsuda was determined to save his most precious possession for
the highest of bidders. Now his patience had met its due reward. The
most illustrious head of the house of the exalted Saito solicited his
services!
So, while Matsuda gloated over the rich reward to be reaped surely from
his lordly patron, the Spider was looking with frightened eyes into
those of the Lord Saito Gonji, and she trembled and turned very pale
under his somber glance. All her gay insouciance, her saucy, quick
repartee, the teasing, witching little graces for which she now was
noted, seemed to have deserted her. It troubled her that she was unable
to obey the command of her master and make his most noble patron smile.
Within the piercing eyes which sought her own she seemed to read only
some tragic question, which, alas, she felt unable to answer.
“I desire to please you, noble sir,” she said, plaintively, and added,
with an impulsive motion of her little hands: “Alas! It is my duty!”
For the first time a faint smile quivered across the young man’s lips;
but he did not speak. He continued to regard her in that musing fashion,
as though he studied every feature of her face and drank in its
loveliness with something of resignation and despair.
His curious silence affected her. Was it not possible to arouse the
strange one, then, to some animation and interest? Timidly she put out
her hand—a mute, charming little gesture—then rested it upon his own. As
though her touch had some electric power which stirred him to the
depths, he leaned suddenly toward her, inclosing her hand in a close,
almost painful grip. Now hungrily, pleadingly, his look enveloped her.
His voice trembled with the emotion he sought vainly to control.
“Geisha, if it were possible—if we belonged in another land—if it were
not for the customs of the ancestors—I would tell you what is in my
heart!”
Like a child, wondering and curious, she answered:
“I pray you, tell me! To keep a troubled secret is like carrying a cup
brim full!”
“I will ask you a question,” he said incisively. “Wilt thou be my wife
for all the lives yet to come?”
As he spoke the forbidden words the Spider turned very pale. She sought
to withdraw her trembling hands from his, but he held to them with a
passionate tenacity. She could not speak. She could but look at him
mutely, piteously; and her lovely, pleading gaze but added to the man’s
distraction.
“Answer me!” he entreated. “Make me the promise, beautiful little
mousmé!”
His vehemence and passion frightened her. She tried to avert her face,
to turn it aside from his burning gaze; but he brought his own
insistently close to hers. She could not escape his impelling eyes. At
last, her bosom heaving up and down like a little troubled sea, she
stammered:
“You speak so strangely, noble sir. I—I—am but—a geisha of the House of
Slender Pines. Thou art as far above my sphere as—as—are the honorable
stars in the heavens.”
Her voice had a quality of exquisite terror, as though she sought vainly
to thrust aside some hypnotic force to which she yearned to yield. It
aroused but the ardor of her lover.
“It is not possible,” he murmured, “for one to be above thee, little
geisha. Thou art lovelier than all the visions of the esteemed Sun Lady
herself. I am thy lover for all time. I desire to possess thee utterly
in all the lives yet to come. Make me the promise, beautiful mousmé,
that thou wilt travel with me—that thou wilt be mine, mine only!”
She drew back as far from him as it was possible, with her hands
jealously held by his own. Her wide, frightened eyes were fixed in
terror upon his.
“I cannot speak the words!” she gasped. “I dare not speak them, august
one!”
For a moment his face, which had been lighted by excitement and passion,
darkened.
“You cannot then return my love?”
“Ah! They are not words for a geisha to speak. It is not for such as I
to make the long journey with one so illustrious as thou!”
A sob broke from her, and because she could no longer bear to meet his
burning gaze she hid her face with the motion of a child against their
clasped hands.
For a long moment there was silence between them. Louder, noisier, rose
the mirth of the revelers about them. A dozen geishas pulled at the
three-stringed instruments. As many more swayed and moved in the figures
of the classical dance. Like great, gaudy butterflies, their bright
wings fluttering behind them, the moving figures of the tea-maidens
passed before them. Almost it seemed as if they two had been purposely
set apart and forgotten. No one approached them. With concerted caution,
all avoided a glance in the direction of the guest of honor and the
famous one who had been chosen to beguile and save him. How well she had
performed her task one could see in the beaming face of Matsuda, the
uneasy face of the elder Lord Saito, and the somewhat scowling one of
the uncle of Ohano.
The Lord Gonji saw nothing of the relatives. He was oblivious indeed of
everything save the shining, drooped little head upon his hands.
Scarcely he knew his own voice, so superlatively gentle and wooing was
its tone.
“I pray you, give me complete happiness with the promise, beloved one,”
he entreated.
She raised her head slowly; and gravely, wistfully, her eyes now
questioned him. Dimly she realized the effect of such a union upon his
haughty family and the ancestors.
She was but a geisha, a cultivated toy, educated for the one purpose of
beguiling men and making their lot brighter. Like the painted and
grotesque comedian who tortured his limbs to make others laugh, so it
was the duty of a geisha to keep ever the laugh upon her lips, even
though the heart within her broke. It was not possible that to her, a
mere dancing girl, one was offering the entrancing opportunity of which
lovers whisper to each other. Her face was very pinched and white, the
eyes startlingly large, as she answered him:
“I dare not speak the words, noble sir. I do not know the way. The Meido
is very far off. We meet but once. Your honorable parents and the
ancestors would turn back one so humble and insignificant as I.”
“The honorable parents,” he gently explained, “can but point our duty in
the present life. In the lives yet to come we choose our own companions.
If I could—if it were possible—how gladly would I take thee also for
this present life.”
She drew back, puzzled, vaguely distressed.
“You—you do not wish me _now_ also?” she stammered, and there was a
shocked, dazed note in her voice. He saw what was in her mind, and it
startled him.
“Do you not know why they have summoned you here to-night?” he
questioned.
“At—at the command of my master,” she faltered. “I am here to—to please
thee, noble sir. If it please thee to make a jest—”
She broke off piteously and tried to smile. Her hands slipped from his
as he arose suddenly and looked down at her solemnly, where she still
knelt at his feet.
“You are here,” he said, “to celebrate my honorable betrothal to Takedo
Ohano-san.”
She did not move, but continued to stare up at him with the
dumb-stricken look of one unjustly punished. Then suddenly she sobbed,
and her little head rested upon the ground at his feet.
“Geisha!” He called to her sharply, commandingly, and yet with a world
of pleading emotion. Matsuda, hovering near, turned and looked
loweringly at the girl on the ground. Her face was humbly in the dust at
the feet of the Lord Saito Gonji. It was a position unworthy of a
geisha, and Matsuda moved furiously nearer to them. This was the work of
the Okusama, inwardly he fumed. Now when the geisha was put to the
greatest test she was found wanting. At the feet of the man when he
should have knelt at hers.
“Geisha!”
This time there was nothing but tenderness in his voice. He was
conscious of the fact that the girl at his feet was suffering. He loved
her, and was sure that life without her would be both intolerable and
worthless. He had begged her to travel with him upon the final “long
journey.” She, in her simple innocence, believed he had asked her in
marriage for this life also. Now, humiliated, she dared not look at him.
Down he knelt beside her; but when he sought to put his arms about her,
she sprang wildly to her feet. Not for a moment did she pause, but like
some hunted, terrified thing fled fleetly across the garden.
He started to follow, but stopped suddenly, blinded by the sudden excess
of madness and rage that swept over him. For, as she ran, her master,
Matsuda, doubled over in her path. His face was purple. His wicked
little eyes glittered like one gone insane, and his great thick lips
fell apart, showing the teeth like tusks of some wild beast. Gonji saw
the shining doubled fists as they rose in the air and descended upon the
head of the hapless Spider. Then he sprang forward like a madman,
leaping at the throat of Matsuda and tossing him aside like some unclean
thing.
She lay unmoving upon her back, her arms cast out like the wings of a
bird on either side. Gonji caught her up in his arms with a cry that
rang out weirdly over the gardens. It stopped the mirth of the revelers
and brought them in a hushed group about the pair. Now silence reigned
in the gardens of the Saito.
On the upper floor of the mansion the walls had been pushed entirely out
so that an open pavilion, flower-laden, made a charming retreat for the
“honorable interiors,” the ladies of the family, who might not, with
propriety, join their lords in the revelry. Here, unseen, these
“precious jewels of the household” might watch the celebration; but it
was the part of the geisha to entertain their lord. Theirs the lot to
receive him when, weary and worn, he must eventually return for rest.
Now, from their sake-sipping the ladies were aroused by that cry of
Saito Gonji. Over the lantern-hung, flower-laden trellis they leaned,
their shrill voices sounding strangely in the silence that had fallen
upon the entire company. Some one lighted a torch and swung it above the
group on the ground. Under its light the mother of Gonji, and his bride,
Ohano, saw the form of the Spider; and beside her, enveloping her in his
arms, whispering to and caressing her, was the Lord Saito Gonji.
Japanese women are trained to hide their deepest emotions. All the world
tells of their impassive stoicism; but human nature is human nature,
after all. So the bride shrieked like one who has lost his mind, but the
cry was strangled ere it was half uttered. When the Lady Saito’s hand
was withdrawn from the mouth of the bride, the pallid-faced Ohano
slipped humbly to her knees, and, shaking like a leaf in a storm,
stammered:
“I—I—b-but laughed at the antics of the comedians. Oh, d-d-d-did you
see—”
Here she broke off and hid her face, with a muffled sob, upon the breast
of the elder woman. Without a word the latter led the girl inside, and
the maidens drew the shoji into place, closing the floor.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER V
“OMI! Omi! Are you there? Wretched little maiden, why do you not come?”
The Spider peered vainly down through the patch in her floor. Then, at
the faint sound of a sliding foot without, she slapped the section of
matting into place again and fell to work in panic haste upon her
embroidery.
A passing geisha thrust in a curious face through the screens and wished
her a pleasant day’s work. The Spider responded cheerfully and showed
her little white teeth in the smile her associates knew so well. But the
instant the geisha had glided out of sight she was back at the patch
again. She called in a whisper: “Omi! Omi! Omi-san!” but no answering
treble child-voice responded.
For a while she crouched over the patch and sought to peer down into the
passage below. As she knelt, something sharp flew up and smote against
her cheek. She grasped at it. Then, hastily closing the patch and, with
stealthy looks about her, pausing a moment with alert ears to listen,
she opened at last the note. It was crushed about a pebble, and was
written on the thinnest of tissue-paper.
Moonlight drank in avidly the burning words of love in the poem. Her
eyes were shining and brilliant, her cheeks and lips as red as the
poppies in her hair, when Matsuda thrust back the sliding screens and
entered the chamber. He said nothing to the smiling geisha, but
contented himself with scrutinizing her in a calculating manner, as
though he summarized her exact value. Then, with a jerk or nod
apparently of satisfaction, he left the room, and the girl was enabled
to reread the beloved epistle.
A few moments later the screens which Matsuda had carefully closed
behind him were cautiously parted a space, and the thin, impish, pert,
and precocious face of a little girl of thirteen was thrust in. She made
motions with her lips to the Spider, who laughed and nodded her head.
Omi—for it was she—slipped into the room. She was an odd-looking little
creature, her body as thin as her wise little face, above which her hair
was piled in elaborate imitation of the coiffure of her mistress and
preceptress. She fell to work at once, solicitously arranging the dress
and hair of the Spider and complaining bitterly that the maids had
neglected, shamefully, her beloved mistress’s toilet.
“Although it is not the proper work for an apprentice-geisha,” she
rattled along, “yet I myself will serve your honorable body, rather than
permit it to suffer from such pernicious neglect.”
She smoothed the little hands of her mistress, manicured and perfumed
them, talking volubly all the time upon every subject save the one the
Spider was waiting to hear about. At last, unable to bear it longer,
Moonlight broke in abruptly:
“How you chatter of insignificant matters! You tease me, Omi. I shall
have to chastise you. Tell me in a breath about the matter.”
Omi grinned impishly, but at the reproachful look of her mistress her
natural impulse to torment even the one she loved best in the world gave
way. She began in a gasp, as though she had just come hastily into the
room.
“Oh, oh, you would never, never believe it in the world. Nor could I,
indeed, had I not seen it with my own insignificant eyes.”
“Yes, yes, speak quickly!” urged the Spider, eagerly hanging upon the
words of the apprentice.
Omi drew in and expelled her breath in long, sibilant hisses after the
manner of the most exalted of aristocrats.
“There are six of them at the gates, not to count the servants and
runners down the road!”
Moonlight looked at her incredulously, and Omi nodded her head with
vigor.
“It is so. I counted each augustness.” She began enumerating upon her
fingers. “There was the high-up Count Takedo Isami, Takedo Sachi,
Takedo—there were four Takedos. Then the Lord Saito Takamura Ichigo,
Saito—”
“Do not enumerate them, Omi. Tell me instead how you came, in spite of
the watchful ones, in spite, too, of Matsuda, to reach his lordship.”
As she spoke the last word reverently, a flush deepened in her cheeks
and her eyes shone upon the apprentice with such a lovely light that the
adoring little girl cried out sharply:
“It is true, Moonlight-san! Thou art lovelier than
Ama-terasu-o-mi-kami!”
“Hush, foolish one, that is blasphemy. Indeed I should be very unhappy
did I outshine the august lady of the sun in beauty. But no more
digressions. If you do not tell me—and tell me at once—exactly what
happened—how you reached the side of his lordship—how he looked—just
how! What was said—the very words—how he spoke—acted. Did he smile, or
was he sad, Omi? Tell me—tell me, please!” She ended coaxingly; but, as
the pert little apprentice merely smiled tantalizingly, she added, very
severely:
“It may be I will look about for a new understudy. There is Ochika—”
At the mention of her rival’s name Omi made a scornful grimace, but she
answered quickly:
“The Okusama helped me. She pretended an illness. Matsuda was afraid,
and remained by her side, chafing her hands and her head.” She laughed
maliciously, and continued: “I slipped out by the bamboo-hedge gate.
Omatsu saw me—” At the look of alarm on the Spider’s face: “Pooh! what
does it matter? Every servant in the house—ah! and the maids and
apprentices—yes, and the most honorable geishas too—know the secret, and
they wish you well, sweet mistress!”
She squeezed Moonlight’s hands with girlish fervor, and the latter
returned the pressure lovingly, but besought her to continue.
“The main gates were closed. Just think! No one is admitted even to the
gardens. Why, ’tis like the days of feudalism. We are in a fortress,
with the enemy on all sides!”
“Oh, Omi, you let your imagination run away with you, and I hang upon
your words, waiting to hear what has actually happened.”
“I am telling you. It is exactly as I have said. Matsuda dares not
offend the powerful family of the Saito, and it is at their command that
the gates of the House of Slender Pines are closed rigorously to all the
public. No one dare enter. No one dare—go out—save—I!” and she smiled
impudently. “It is said”—lowering her voice confidentially—“that Matsuda
has been paid a vast sum of ‘cash’ to keep his house closed. Mistress,
there are great notices in black and white nailed upon the line of trees
clear down the road. ‘The House of Slender Pines is closed for the
season of greatest heat!’ And just think,” and the little
apprentice-geisha pouted, “not a koto or a samisen is permitted to be
touched! Who ever heard of a geisha-house as silent as a mortuary hall?
It is very sad. We wish to sing and dance and court the smiles of noble
gentlemen; but you have made such a mess with your honorable love affair
that every geisha and every apprentice is being punished! We are not
permitted to speak above a whisper. Our lovers must stand beyond the
gates and serenade us themselves. It is—”
“Oh, Omi, you wander so! Now tell me, sweet girl, exactly what I am
perishing to know.”
“I will, duly! You preach patience to me so often,” declared the impish
little creature; “now you must practise it also. I resume my narrative.
Pray do not interrupt so often, as it delays my story.” With that she
leisurely proceeded.
“Mistress, the entire gardens of the House of Slender Pines are
_patrolled_—yes, and by armed samourai!”
“Samourai! You speak nonsense. There is no such thing to-day as a
samourai. Swords, moreover, are not permitted. Omi, you are tormenting
me, and it is very unkind and ungrateful. You will force me to punish
you very severely, much as I love you!”
“It is as I have said. I speak only the truth. The ones who guard our
house are exalted ones—samourai by birth at least, relatives of his
lordship. They do not permit even the smallest aperture to be unwatched,
whereby his lordship might slip into the gardens, and from thence into
my mistress’s chamber—”
“Omi!”
“—for it has gone abroad through all the Saito clan that the peace of
the most honorable ancestors is about to be imperiled.”
Moonlight’s color was dying down, and as the little girl proceeded her
two hands stole to her breast and clung to where the love poem was
hidden.
“As the relatives cannot by entreaty force his lordship from your
vicinity, loveliest of mistresses, they are bent upon guarding him, in
case by the artful intrigues known only to lovers”—and the little maiden
shook her head with precocious wisdom—“he may actually reach your side
despite the care of Matsuda.”
Moonlight now seemed scarcely to be listening. She was looking out
dreamily before her, and her fancy conjured up the inspired face of her
lover. She felt again the warm touch of his lips against her hair, and
heard the ardent, passionate promise he had made in the little interval
when she had come to consciousness within his arms there in the gardens
of his ancestors. “If it is impossible to have you—ay, in this very
life—then I will wed no other. No! though the voices of all the
ancestors shout to me to do my duty!”
Now she knew he was very near to her. For days they had been unable to
induce him to leave the vicinity of her home. Outside the gates of the
closed geisha-house he had taken his stand, there to importune the
implacable Matsuda and try vainly, by every ruse and device, to reach
her side.
Though she knew that never for a moment would the watchful relatives
permit him to be alone, still at last he had eluded them sufficiently to
send her word through the clever little Omi. Now she listened with
tingling ears, as Omi glibly and with exaggeration told how, as she flew
by on her skipping-rope, he had slipped the note into her sleeve. Only
this acute child could have outwitted Matsuda in this way. A few moments
of hiding in the deserted ozashiki, a chance to toss the note aloft to
her mistress, and then to await her opportunity when the lower halls
should be clear and slip upstairs! Apprentices were not permitted to be
thus at large, and Omi knew that, if caught, her punishment would be
quite dreadful; but she gaily took the risk for her beloved mistress.
She sat back now on her heels, having finished her recital. She watched
Moonlight, as the latter read and reread her love missive. Much to the
disappointment of the little maiden, her mistress did not read it aloud.
The sulky pout, however, soon faded from the girl’s lips, as her
mistress put her cheek against Omi’s thin little one. With arms
enclasped, the two sat in silence, watching the falling of the twilight;
and in the mind of each one solitary figure stood clearly outlined. His
features were delicate, his arched eyebrows as sensitive as a poet’s,
his lips as full and pouting as a child’s. His eyes were large and long
and somewhat melancholy, but there were latent hints within them of a
stronger power capable of awakening. Upon his face was that ineffaceable
stamp of caste, and it lent a charm to the youth’s entire bearing.
A maid pattered into the apartment and lit the solitary andon. Its wan
light added but a feeble gleam in the darkened room. Presently she
returned, bearing the simple meal for the geisha and her apprentice.
When this was finished, with the aid of Omi she spread the
sleeping-quilts and snuffed the andon light. It was the orders of
Matsuda that the house should be darkened at the hour when previously it
was lighted most gaily. There was nothing left for them to do save go to
bed. Yet for some time, in the darkened chamber, with its closed walls,
the two remained whispering and planning; and once the watchful maid
upon her sleeping-mat outside the screens heard the soft, musical
laughter of the famous geisha, and the servant sighed uneasily. She did
not like this work assigned her by Matsuda.
In the middle of the night Omi, turning on the quilts, missed her
mistress at her side. Arising, she felt along the floor beside her.
Then, alarmed, she slipped out from under the netting. It was a clear
moonlight night, and a golden stream came into the room through the
widely opened shoji. Leaning against it, with her dreamy head resting
upon the trellis, was her mistress. By the light of the moon she held
the shimmering sheets of tissue-paper, and over these she still pored
and wept.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VI
OF the once flourishing and numerous family of the Saito, there were but
two male members living, Saito Gonji, and his father, Saito Ichigo. The
relatives of the Lady Saito were, however, numerous, and, like the
mother of Gonji, they possessed stern and domineering dispositions. In
contrast, her husband was easy-going and genial, and it had been an easy
matter, in consequence, thus far, for the relatives to rule the head of
the illustrious house. Lord Ichigo had even followed their counsel in
the matter of the education of his boy, although it had cut him to the
heart to resign his cherished son at so tender an age to the severe
tutors chosen for him by his wife’s relatives.
When Ohano had been selected as a wife for the youth, the father of
Gonji had offered no objection. In fact, there was little that he could
have found to object to in this particular matter. The girl was of a
family equally honorable; her health was excellent; she had shown no
traits of character objectionable in a woman. Indeed, she appeared to be
an honorable and desirable vehicle to hand down the race of Saito of
imperishable fame. And that, of course, was the main idea of marriage.
It was a matter of duty to the ancestors, and not of desire of the
individuals. So the peace-loving elder Lord Saito believed, at the time
of the betrothal, that he had safely disposed of a most vexing problem.
He was dumbfounded, panic-stricken, at the turn events had taken. On all
sides, harangued by that insistent lady, his wife, and also by her many
relatives, he found it, nevertheless, impossible to turn a deaf ear to
the impassioned pleading of the young man himself. Day and night Gonji
desperately beset his father, ignoring utterly all other members of the
family.
His vigil of many days before the gates of the House of Slender Pines
had but strengthened the young man’s resolve. At any cost—yes, at the
sacrifice of the ancestors’ honor even—he was determined to possess the
Spider. Since he was assured that his passion was returned—and the
assurance came through the lips of the little Omi, who had screeched the
words impishly in his ear, as if in derision, that those about them
might not suspect—Gonji determined to marry the geisha not alone in the
thousand vague lives yet to come, but in the present one, too. He must
have her now. It was impossible to wait, he told his father. If the
cruel laws forbade their union, then they would go to the gods, and the
less harsh heart of the river would receive them in a bridal night that
would never pass away.
It is not an easy matter for a youth in Japan to marry without the full
consent of his parents. Every possible obstacle had been thrown into the
path of the despairing Gonji. Even his revenue was cut off completely,
so that, even had he been able to move the stony heart of the
geisha-keeper from the position he had taken at the behest of the
powerful family, Gonji had not the means to purchase the girl’s freedom
from her bonds. There was nothing, therefore, left for the unfortunate
Gonji save to focus all his energies upon his father; and day and night
he besieged the unhappy Ichigo.
The latter had listened, without comment, to the law as laid down by
Takedo Isami, the uncle of Ohano. He had listened to the urgings of the
many other relatives of his wife that he remain firm throughout the
ordeal they realized he was passing through. He had given an equally
attentive ear to the besieging relatives and to the stern Lady Saito,
who was confident of the powerful influence of the tongue upon her lord.
Then he had hearkened in silence, with drawn, averted face, to the
desperate pleading of his only son, the one creature in the world that
he truly loved.
While the father miserably debated the matter within himself, Gonji
suddenly ceased to importune his parent. Retiring to his own chamber, he
closed and fastened the doors against all possible intruders.
The relatives regarded this latest act of their fractious young kinsman
as an evidence that at last his impetuous young will was breaking. They
congratulated themselves upon their firmness at this time, and advised
Lord Saito Ichigo to retain an unbending attitude in the matter.
The abrupt retirement of his son, however, had a strange effect upon
Ichigo. He could think of nothing save the youth’s last words. He dared
not confide his fears even to his wife, who was already sufficiently
distracted by her task of caring for Ohano and her anxiety about her
son.
Against the advice of the relatives that Gonji be left alone to fight
out the battle by himself, his father forced his way into the boy’s
presence. Gonji responded neither to his knocking nor to his father’s
imperative call. So Lord Ichigo forced the screens apart.
In one glance the father of Gonji saw what it was the desperate young
man now contemplated, for he had robed himself from head to foot in the
white garments of the dead. His face was, moreover, as fixed and white
as though already he had started upon the journey.
“Gonji—my dear son!”
The elder Lord Saito scarce knew his own voice, so hoarse and full of
anguished emotion was it. He stood close by the kneeling Gonji and
rested his hands heavily upon the boy’s slender shoulders. Gonji looked
up slowly and met his father’s gaze. A mist came before his eyes, but he
spoke steadily, gently:
“It is better this way. I pray you to pardon me. I am unable to serve
the ancestors.”
“It is not of the ancestors I think,” said Lord Saito, gruffly, “but of
you—you only, my son!”
Gonji looked at him strangely now, as though he sought to fathom the
mind of his father; but he turned away, perplexed and distressed.
“You must believe that,” went on his father, brokenly. “What is best for
your happiness, that is my wish, above all things. If happiness is only
possible for you by giving you what is your heart’s desire, then”—a
smile broke over the grave, pain-racked features of his father, as
though a weight were suddenly lifted from his heart at the sudden
resolve that had come to him—“then,” he continued, “it shall be!”
With a cry, Gonji gripped at his parent’s hands, his eyes turned
imploringly upon Lord Saito’s face.
“You mean—ah, you promise, then—” He could not speak the words that
rushed in a flood to his lips.
“Hé! (Yes!)” said Lord Ichigo, solemnly. “It is a promise.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VII
HAVING determined upon the course to take, Lord Saito Ichigo summoned a
council of the relatives of the family.
For the first time, possibly, since his marriage, he faced the assembled
kinsfolk with the calm demeanor of one who had seized, and intended to
retain, the authority properly invested in him as head of the house of
Saito. His should be the voice heard! His the decision that must
prevail!
In the minds of most men—Japanese men, at least—who have married at the
dictates of their parents, there is always some little cherished chamber
to which, despite the passing years, memory returns with loving,
loitering step. So with Lord Ichigo. Now, with the fate of his beloved
child in his hands, the father looked back upon his own life, and it was
no reflection upon his excellent and virtuous wife that he did so with
just a shade of vague regret.
The impetuous Gonji’s passionate words had not been spoken to deaf ears.
Lord Saito Ichigo was determined to keep his promise to his son,
whatever the result; for well he knew of the upheaval in his household
which would be sure to follow.
There was, of course, Ohano to think of. Her case was not as difficult
as it seemed, he pointed out to the assembled relatives. An orphan, one
of a family already allied by marriage to the Saitos, they had taken her
into their house at an early age. They already regarded her as a
daughter. As for a daughter, they would seek, outside their own family,
for a worthy and suitable husband for the maiden. In fact, it was better
that Ohano should marry another than Lord Gonji, since the latter had
always looked upon her as a sister, and a union between them was, to
him, repugnant. That, indeed, Ichigo himself had thought at first, but
he had desired to please “the honorable interior” (his wife) and the
many relatives of his honorable wife.
Thus he disposed of this matter briefly, and, although the relatives
looked at each other with startled glances, they had nothing to say.
Something in the fixed attitude of the one they had hitherto somewhat
contemptuously regarded as weak and yielding claimed now their
respectful attention.
To approach the matter of the marriage of a Saito with a public geisha
required not alone tact, but bravery. Hardly had the father of Gonji
mentioned the matter when a storm of dissent arose. To a man—to say
nothing of the countless unseen female relatives arrayed even more
bitterly against her—the exalted kinsmen resented even the suggestion of
such a union. So the Lord Ichigo approached the subject by wary paths.
In the first place, he pointed out boldly, the assembled ones were not
actually of the Saito blood, but relatives by marriage only; and, while
their counsel and advice were respectfully and gratefully solicited,
even their united verdict could not finally stand out against the legal
head of the house. This bold statement at the outset met a silence more
eloquent of resentment than any storm of words.
It was imperative, as all had agreed, continued Lord Ichigo, that the
son and heir of the house of Saito should make an early marriage. He was
the last of the line. The glorious and heroic ancestors demanded
descendants. It was a sacred duty to keep alive the illustrious seed.
Lord Ichigo launched into a detailed recital here of the notable deeds
of his ancestors, but was stopped abruptly by the sarcastic comment of
Takedo Isami, who quoted the ancient proverb, “There is no seed to a
great man!” meaning none could inherit his greatness.
This cut off Ichigo’s oratory; and, hurt and disturbed at the quotation
as a reflection upon his own shortcomings, he brought up squarely before
them the main issue.
These were the days of enlightenment, when the iron-clad ships of war
sailed the seas as far as the great Western lands; when the Japanese had
accepted the best of the ways of the West; when the spirit of the New
Japan permeated every nook and corner of the empire. There was one
Western privilege which the men of New Japan were now demanding, and
desired above all things. That they must have: the right to love!
Now, “love” is not a very proper word, according to the Japanese notion
of polite speech. Hence the attitude of the relatives. Nor did the
frigid atmosphere melt in the slightest before the flow of fervid
eloquence that the father of Gonji brought to the defense of this
reprehensible weakness.
Takedo Isami, who seemed to have assumed the position of leader and
dictator among the relatives, arose slowly to his feet, and, thrusting
out a pugnacious chin, asked for the right to speak. He was short, dark,
with the face of a fighter and the body of a dwarf.
Admitting the right of man to love, he said it was better to hide this
weakness, and, by all means, fight its insidious effort to enter the
household. Only men of low morals married for love. Duty was so
beautiful a thing that it brought its own reward. The proper kind of
love—the lofty and the pure—declared the uncle of Ohano, came always
after marriage, and sanctified the union. That the last of a great race,
in whose keeping the ancestors had confidently placed the family honor,
should contemplate a union of mere love and passion with a notorious and
public geisha was a gratuitous and cruel insult not alone to his many
living relatives—and they of his mother’s side were equally of his
blood—but to the ancestors.
As the uncle of Ohano reseated himself a low murmur of approbation broke
out from the circle. Gloomy looks were turned toward Ichigo, whose face
had become curiously fixed. Far from weakening his resolve, his pride
had been stung to the quick. Nothing, he told himself inwardly, would
cause him to retreat from the position he had taken. He looked Takedo
Isami squarely in the eye ere he spoke.
The honorable Takedo Isami’s remarks, he declared, were a reflection
upon his own, since they concerned one whom the ancestors and the Lord
Saito Gonji deemed worthy to honor. Moreover, it was both vain and
reprehensible to cast a stone at a profession honored by all intelligent
Japanese. It was of established knowledge that often the geishas were
recruited from the noblest families in Japan. It was absurd to regard
them with disdain, as apparently had latterly become the fashion. There
was no great event in the history of the nation since feudal times
wherein the geisha had not played her part nobly. The greatest of
sacrifices she had made for her country and the Mikado. There were
instances, too famous to need repeating, of the most exquisite
martyrdom. The Emperor, the nobility, the priests—all delighted to do
her honor. Only the ignorant assumed to despise her. She was in reality
the darling and the pride of the entire nation. One would as soon dream
of being without the flowers and the birds, and all the other joyous
things of life, as the geisha. Who was it, then, dared to reflect upon
the most charming of Japanese institutions?
Up sprang Takedo Isami, his hand raised, his dark face flushed with
fury, despite the restraint he sought to exercise upon his features. His
voice was under control, and he spoke with incisive bitterness.
His honorable kinsman, he loudly declared, wished but to confuse the
issue. No one denied the virtues of the geisha; also the undoubted fact
that many of them came from the impoverished families of the samourai.
Nevertheless, charming and desirable as she was, she had not been
educated to be the mother of a great race. Her lithe, twisting, dancing
little body was not meant to bear children. Her light, frivolous mind
was ill-fitted to instruct one’s sons and daughters. Society had set her
in her proper place. It was against all precedents to take her from her
sphere. One did not desire as a mate through life a creature of mere
beauty, any more than one would care to take one’s daily bowl of rice
from a fragile work of art which would shatter at the mere contact of
the sturdy chop-sticks against it.
Such a storm of dissent and discussion now arose that it was impossible
for the father of Gonji to hear his own voice, and indeed all seemed to
make an effort to drown it. So he summoned servants, and coolly bade
them put the amado (outside sliding walls) in place, lest the unseemly
noise of wordy strife be heard by some passing neighbor—for the Japanese
esteem it a disgrace to engage in controversy. Then, when the doors were
in place, Lord Saito Ichigo gravely bowed to the assembled relatives,
and, taking his son by the arm, bade them good night, advising that they
argue the matter among themselves, without his unnecessary presence.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VIII
THE most dreaded moment of a Japanese girl’s life is when she enters the
house of the mother-in-law. Her future happiness, she knows, is in the
hands of this autocratic and all-powerful lady. Meekly the wise bride
enters, with propitiating smiles and gifts, robed in her most
inconspicuous gown, her aim being not to enhance whatever beauty she may
possess, but, if possible, to hide it.
Far more necessary is it for her to have the goodwill of the
mother-in-law than that of the husband. It is even possible for the
mother-in-law, for certain causes, to divorce the young wife. In point
of fact, the bride goes on trial not to her husband, but to her
husband’s parents. It depends entirely upon their verdict whether she
shall be “returned” or not. In most cases, however, where the marriage
is arranged between the families, there is the desire to please the
family of the bride; and it is more often the case than not that the
parents of the husband receive the little, fearful bride with open arms
and hearts.
The geisha is not educated for marriage. From her earliest years,
indeed, she is taught that her office in life is merely to entertain.
In the case of the Spider, she had even less opportunity for knowing the
rules that prevailed in such matters. She had been educated by the
witless wife of the geisha-keeper. All her short life had been spent in
aiding nature to make her more beautiful, more charming. The most
important thing in life, the thing that brought rare smiles of
admiration to even the sternest lips, was to be beautiful, witty, and
charming.
So the Spider set out for the Saito house with a light and fearless
heart, confident in the power of her beauty and witchery to win even the
most frosty-hearted of mothers-in-law. Arrayed in the most gorgeous robe
the geisha-house afforded, with huge flowers in her hair, her little
scarlet fan fluttering at her breast, attended by her no less gaudily
dressed maiden and apprentice, Omi, and followed almost to the gates of
the estate by a procession of well-meaning friends and former comrades,
the geisha entered the ancestral home of the illustrious family. For
just a moment, ere she entered, she paused upon the threshold, a
premonitory thrill of fear seizing her. She clung to the supporting hand
of the garrulous Omi, whose shrill and acid little tongue already grew
mute in the silent halls of the shiro (mansion).
Presently they were ushered into the ozashiki, and the Spider became
conscious of the stiff and ceremonious figures standing back coldly by
the screens, their gowns seeming in the subdued light of the room of a
similar dull color to the satin fusuma of the walls, their shining
topknots undecorated with flower or ornament, their thin, unmoving lips
and eyes almost closed in cold, unsmiling scrutiny of the intruder, who
seemed, like some brilliant butterfly, to have dropped in their midst
from another world.
The women of the household—and these comprised the mother, two austere
maternal aunts, and Takedo Ohano-san (she who was to have been the bride
of Lord Gonji)—surveyed the Spider with narrow, keen eyes that took in
every detail of her flaming gown, her dazzling coiffure, flower-laden,
and, beneath, the exquisite little face, with wide and starlit eyes that
looked at them now in friendly appeal.
There was no word spoken. Nothing but the sighing, hissing sound of
indrawn breaths, as with precise formality they made their obeisances to
the bride.
In vain did the wandering eyes of the geisha scan the farthermost corner
of the great room in search of her lover, or even his seemingly friendly
father. There were only the women there to receive her.
Dimly, now, she recalled hearing or reading somewhere that this was a
fashion followed by many families—the reception of the bride at first
alone by the women of the house, who were later to present her to the
assembled relatives. But why this disconcerting silence? Why the cold,
unfriendly, lofty gaze of these unmoving women? They stood like grave
automata, regarding sternly the bride of the Lord Saito Gonji.
The smile upon the geisha’s lips flickered away tremulously; her little
head drooped like a flower; she closed her eyes lest the threatening
tears might fall.
A voice, cold, harsh, and with that note of command of one in authority
addressing a servant, at last broke the silence.
“It is my wish,” said the Lady Saito Ichigo, “that you retire to your
chamber, and there remove the garments of your trade.”
So strange and unexpected were the words that at first the Spider did
not realize that they could possibly be addressed to her. She looked up,
bewildered, and encountered the steely gaze of the mother-in-law.
Moonlight never forgot that first glance. In the unrelenting gaze bent
upon her she read what brought havoc and pain to her heart, for all the
stored-up resentment and hatred that burned within the Lady Saito Ichigo
showed now in her face. Her voice droned on with mechanical, incisive
calmness, but always with the cruel and harsh tone of contemptuous
command:
“It is my wish that your maiden of the geisha-house be returned at once
to her proper home.”
She clapped her hands precisely twice, and a serving-woman answered the
summons and knelt respectfully to take the order of her mistress.
“You will conduct the wife of the Lord Saito Gonji to her chamber.”
The servant crossed to the still kneeling Moonlight, and while the
latter, mystified, looked dumbly at the exalted but, to her, horrible
lady, she assisted the Spider to arise. Mechanically and fearfully,
pausing not even at the wrathful, sobbing outcry that had broken loose
from Omi, she followed in the wake of the serving-maid.
Presently she found herself in an empty chamber, unlike any she had
known in the geisha-house, with its golden matting shining like glass,
and its lacquer latticed walls of water-paper, and the sliding screens,
rare and exquisite works of art. Here the maid fell to work upon the
geisha, removing every vestige of her attire and substituting the plain
but elegant flowing robes of a lady of rank.
From the geisha’s hair she removed the ornaments and the poppies. She
swept it down, like a cloud of lacquer, upon the shoulders of the girl,
then drew it up into the stiff and formal mode proper for one of her
class. From the girl’s face she wiped the last trace of rouge and
powder, revealing the rosy, shining skin beneath, clear and clean as a
baby’s.
When she emerged from the hands of the maid, Moonlight looked at herself
curiously in the small mirror tendered her, and for a moment she stared,
dumbfounded at the face that looked back at her. It seemed so strangely
young, despite its wide and wounded eyes. Though she was in reality more
charming than ever, seeming like one who had come from a fresh and
invigorating bath, the geisha felt that the last vestige of her beauty
had fled. Within her heart arose a panic-stricken fear of the effect of
the metamorphosis upon her lord. She wished ardently she were back in
the noisy geisha-house, with the maidens clamoring about her and the
apprentices vying with one another in imitating her. She put the mirror
behind her. Her lips trembled so she could hardly compress them, and to
avoid the scrutiny of the maid she moved blindly to the shoji. There she
stared out unseeingly at the landscape before her, heroically trying to
choke back the tears that would force their way and dripped down her
dimpled cheeks like rain.
Some one whispered her name, very softly, adoringly. She turned and
looked at him—her young bridegroom, with his pale face alight with
happiness. She tried to answer him, but even his name eluded her. It was
the first time they had been alone together, the first time they had
seen each other since that night in the gardens of the Saito.
“Why, how beautiful thou art!” he stammered. “More so even than I had
dreamed!”
He was very close to her now, and almost unconsciously she leaned
against him. His arms enfolded her rapturously, and she felt his young
cheek warm against her own.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IX
“THE mistake—you will admit it was a mistake?—was to have countenanced
such a match at all,” said the Lady Saito Ichigo.
Her husband’s manner was less sure, less unyielding than it had been in
many days. Indeed, there was a slightly apologetic tone in his voice,
and he avoided the angry eyes of his spouse. He too had seen the arrival
of the Spider!
“Well, well, let us admit it, then, for the sake of peace. The marriage
was a mistake. But consider, our son’s happiness—nay, his very life!—was
at stake.”
He lowered his voice.
“I will tell you in confidence that which I had discovered. They had
already made their plans to marry.”
“Pff!” Lady Saito waved the matter aside as unbelievable. “Will you tell
me how they were to do this thing? Marriage, fortunately, is not such an
easy matter without the consent of the parents. Moreover, the woman was
under bonds to her keeper.”
“You forget there are other unions possible to lovers. You should know
that many such start bravely on the long journey to the Meido when it is
impossible to marry in this life.”
Lady Saito turned her face slowly toward her husband and fixed him with
a piercing, bitter glare.
“That,” said Ichigo, gently, “was the union contemplated by our
children.”
His wife drew in her breath in that peculiar, hissing fashion of the
Japanese. Her beady little eyes glittered like fire.
“That was what _she_—the Spider woman—induced my son to do! You see, do
you not, how completely she has seduced him—even from his duty to his
parents and his ancestors?”
She beat out the minute blaze from her pipe, digging into it with her
forefinger. Then, first coughing harshly to attract the attention of the
young people, she called out loudly:
“Come hither, if you please! I say, come! You seem to forget you are no
longer in the geisha-house. It is the voice of supreme authority which
summons you now. A cup of tea, if you please—and water for my honorable
feet!”
She repeated the demand twice, in a peremptory voice; and now she arose
to her feet and advanced a step almost threateningly toward the young
couple.
They had been smiling into each other’s eyes. They were oblivious of
everything and every one in the room, for they were in that exalted and
enraptured condition of first love which makes the individual seem
almost stupid and obtuse to all save the loved one. Only dimly the words
of their mother had reached them, and they stirred like children rudely
awakened from some beautiful dream. The smile was still on the face of
the girl as she turned toward her mother-in-law; but it slowly faded,
leaving her pale, confused, and timorous. She met the malevolent gaze of
the older woman, and began to tremble.
She tried to speak, and her hand reached out flutteringly toward her
husband—a charming, helpless little gesture that warmed him to the soul.
He inclosed the little reaching hand, and thus, hand in hand, they faced
the enraged lady.
“Your manners, my good girl, are in keeping with the geisha-house. Is it
the fashion there to ignore the voice of authority?”
The bride’s large, dark eyes had widened in innocent surprise. Only
partially she seemed to comprehend the older woman’s attitude. She had
been but a day in the house of the parents-in-law. No one as yet had
taught her, the cherished, petted, adored star of the House of Slender
Pines, that the position of a daughter-in-law is often as lowly as that
of a servant. Not even by Matsuda had she ever been thus offensively
addressed. She said, stammeringly:
“I—I—have not heard the voice of which you speak, august lady.”
A cruel smile curled the lips of her mother-in-law.
“Then it is time, my girl, that you kept your ears wide open.”
She sat down upon her heels abruptly by the hibachi.
“Tea is desirable for the honorable insides. Water for my feet, which
are tired!”
The girl’s eyes turned inquiringly toward her husband. He had grown
darkly red. For a moment he seemed about to speak protestingly to his
mother; then in a whisper he murmured to his bride:
“It is your—duty!”
Moonlight’s shocked glance had gone from her husband’s face to the
opposite shoji. There, in dumb show, a maid beckoned to her. Without a
word her lovely little head bowed in meek assent; she began upon her
first menial task.
When she was gone Gonji looked scowlingly at the back of his mother’s
head—she had turned her face rigidly from him. He felt keenly the danger
threatening his wife, the one he adored. He knew the exact power in the
hands of the mother-in-law, the cruel whip of authority it was possible
for her to wield. That Moonlight would be forced to succumb to the
common lot of many unhappy wives he had not realized. Secretly he
determined to help her in every way possible within his power.
“What has come over you?” His mother’s voice broke upon his miserable
reverie, and it was as harsh as the one she employed to his wife. “Is it
a new fashion of the geisha-house perchance—to answer a parent’s
question with silence?”
“Did you question me, mother? I am sorry I did not hear you.”
“Oh, it is of no consequence. Besides, you are not listening, even now.
Your eyes are still upon the screen through which the insignificant
daughter-in-law passed to do me service.”
He flushed and bit his lips. Something in his mother’s baleful look
moved him to an impetuous cry:
“Mother! Do not hate my wife! If you could but know her as she is, so
sweet and lovely and—”
“There is no medicine for a fool!” snarled his mother, enraged at the
boy’s apparent infatuation.
Moonlight, who had pushed the sliding doors open, heard the words, and
now she paused, looking from one to the other. Gonji hastened across to
her and seized the pail of water from her hand.
“It is too heavy for hands so small—and so lovely!” he cried, and then,
as though aghast at his own words, he again pleadingly faced his mother.
“We have many servants. Why give such employment to my wife?”
“Since when,” demanded the mother, hoarsely, “did a childless son become
master in his father’s house?”
“These are modern times, mother,” he protested. “She has not been bred
for service such as this!”
“Then it is time we undertook her education,” said his mother,
ominously. “In the house of the honorable mother-in-law she will quickly
learn her proper place.”
She put out her feet, and the girl knelt and washed them.
Alone that evening in their room, they clung together like frightened
children. It had been a hard, a cruel day for both.
“It is true,” she said, searching his face in the hope of finding a
denial there, “that your parents bitterly hate me.”
“They will outgrow it. It is not so with my father, and later you will
win my mother’s affection. Your sweetness, beauty, goodness, beloved
one, will win her even against her will.”
She held him back from her, with her two little hands resting flatly on
his breast.
“They despise me because I am a geisha? That is why they treat me so.”
“No, it is not that only. It is often the case at first in the house of
the parents-in-law. It is your duty to serve them—to obey even their
cruel caprices. But”—and he drew her into a warm embrace—“it will not be
for long! Maybe a year—longer, if the gods decree it! You can bear it
for a little while, can you not, for me?”
“And after that?” she persisted, with the clear-eyed innocence of a
child.
“After that? Why, the gods are good!” he cried, joyously. “We will have
our own home. The humblest daughter-in-law is elevated with the coming
of an heir!”
Her eyes were very wide, and in their dark depths he saw a piteous look
of terror there. She caught at his hand and clung to it.
“Gonji! Suppose—suppose it is not possible for me—to please the gods!”
she gasped. “Ah!”—as he hastened to reassure her—“it is said by the wise
ones that a geisha is but a fragile toy, for transient pleasure only,
but with neither the body nor the heart to mother a race!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER X
LIFE for a young wife in the house of her parents-in-law in Japan is
seldom a bed of roses. Of the entire family she is, up to a certain
period, the most insignificant. Under the most galling circumstances the
Japanese bride remains meek, dutiful, patient. She dare not even look
too fondly for comfort from her husband, lest she arouse the jealousy of
the august lady, for no woman can, with equanimity, endure the thought
that her adored son prefers another to herself.
Moonlight’s lot was harder than that of most brides, for, besides the
menial tasks assigned her, she was obliged to endure the veiled,
insulting references to her former caste, and to carry always with her
the knowledge that she was not alone despised but hated by her husband’s
people.
There was one compensation, however. Far from decreasing, the love of
the young Lord Gonji for his beautiful wife grew ever stronger. It was
impossible, moreover, for him to conceal the state of his heart from the
lynx-eyed, passionately jealous mother, with the consequence that she
let no opportunity escape her of making her daughter’s life a burden. In
this venomous task she was ably assisted by Ohano, who was still a
member of the household.
In contrast to the treatment accorded the young wife, Ohano was
cherished and made the constant companion and confidante of Lady Saito.
Always healthy, plump, and active, she presented at this time a striking
contrast to the wistful-eyed and fragile Moonlight, who looked as if a
breath might blow her away. She was given to dreaming and star-gazing, a
girl devoted to poetry and music. In the geisha-house her fresh, young
laughter had mingled at all times with the other joyous sounds. Now,
however, she seemed under some spell. She was a different creature, one
who even moved uncertainly, starting painfully at the slightest motion
and flushing and paling whenever addressed.
She had set herself the task of studying “The Greater Learning for
Women,” and now, painfully, from day to day, she, who had once gaily
ordered all about her, tried to obey meekly the strict rules laid down
for her sex by Confucius.
No matter how humiliating the task set her, how harshly, and even
cruelly, the tongue of the mother-in-law lashed her, she made no murmur
of complaint. But daily she visited the Temple. While it seemed as if
her back must break from weariness, she would remain upon her knees for
hours at the shrine, murmuring ever one insistent, passionate prayer to
the gods.
The first year passed away, and there was no change in the household of
the Saitos.
A letter came to the young wife from the wife of Matsuda, entreating her
former favorite to come to her for a little visit. The letter was laid
meekly before the mother-in-law, and, to the girl’s surprise, permission
was granted. Her husband took her to her former home and left her there
among her friends.
They had both expected that her health would be improved by the change,
by the reunion with old friends and comrades, the brightness and cheer
of the House of Pleasure, and the throng of admiring maidens and geishas
about her. But, instead, the place had a depressing effect upon the
former geisha. The lights, the constant strumming of drum and samisen,
the singing, the continuous dancing and chatting, bewildered her, and
before the week was over she returned to her husband’s home. Hardly,
however, had she entered the Saito house when a new fear seized her.
Something in the silent, speculating gaze of her mother-in-law smote her
heart with terror. Of what was the older woman thinking, she wondered,
and what had put that curious smile of satisfied triumph upon the face
of Ohano?
Troubled, she begged her husband to tell her exactly of what they had
talked in her absence. He reassured her, told her she but imagined a
change; but he held her so closely, so savagely to his breast that she
was surer than ever that something menaced their happiness.
The following morning she trembled and turned very pale at a sneering
hint conveyed by the mother-in-law.
The fact that she was childless at the end of the first year, then, had
become a subject of remark in the family!
The Lady Saito remarked sarcastically that among certain classes it was
customary for childless women to drink of the Kiyomidzu Temple springs.
They were said to contain miraculous qualities by which one might attain
to motherhood.
Moonlight said nothing, but unconsciously her glance stole to her
husband. He had grown uncomfortably red, and she saw his scowling face
turned upon his mother.
Later, very timidly, she begged his permission to drink of the springs.
He was opposed to it, saying it was a superstition of the ignorant; his
mother but jested. She pleaded so insistently, and seemed to take the
matter so deeply to heart, that at last he consented.
And so, with this last frantic hope, the geisha whose flashing beauty
and talents had made her a queen in the most exacting of the tea-houses
of Kioto now joined this melancholy band of childless women who thus
desperately seek to please the gods by drinking of their favored waters.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XI
AS a matter of expediency, the father told Gonji, it would be necessary
to divorce Moonlight. One could not allow one’s family to be wiped out
because of a matter of mere sentiment and passion. Doubtless, the young
wife, who had proved a most docile and obedient daughter-in-law in every
way, would see the necessity of dissolving the union.
Gonji pleaded for time, one, two, three more years. Moonlight was very
young. They could afford to wait.
His father, at heart as soft toward his son as his wife was stern,
surrendered, as always.
“Arrange it with your mother, then. I am going to Tokio for a week.”
It was a difficult subject to breach to his mother, and Gonji avoided it
fearfully; nor did he mention the matter to his wife, whose wistful
glance he had begun to avoid. Indeed, he saw less of his wife each day,
for his mother was careful to keep the girl constantly employed in her
service, and in the intervals of leisure Moonlight would go to the
shrines or to the Kiyomidzu springs. Gonji, moreover, was making an
effort to conceal somewhat of his affection for his wife from his mother
in an effort to conciliate her; and he even made advances toward the
older lady, waiting upon her with great thoughtfulness and seeming
anxious for her constant comfort and happiness. But all his efforts met
with satirical and acid remarks from his mother, and not for a moment
did she change in her attitude to the young wife.
The subject, avoided as it had been by the young husband, was bound to
come up at last. It was plain that it occupied the mind of Lady Saito at
this time to the exclusion of all else. She broached it herself one
morning at breakfast, when, besides her son and her daughter-in-law,
Ohano was present, ostentatiously vying with the young wife in
replenishing the older woman’s plate and cup.
“Now,” said Lady Saito, abruptly, turning over her rice bowl to signify
her meal was ended, “it must be plain to both of you that things cannot
continue as they are. The fate of all our ancestors is menaced. Come,
Moonlight, lift up your head. Suggest some solution of the problem.”
“I will double my offerings at the shrines,” said the young creature,
with quivering lips; and at the contemptuous movement of her
mother-in-law, and the smile upon Ohano’s face, she added, desperately:
“I will wear my knees out, if necessary. I will not leave the springs at
all, till the gods have heard my prayer.”
Lady Saito tapped her finger irritably against the tobacco-bon. Ohano
solicitously filled and lit the long-stemmed pipe, and refilled and
relit it ere the mother of Gonji spoke again.
“Of course, it is very hard. So is everything in life—hard! We learn
that as we grow older; but there are the comforting words of the
philosophers. You should study well the ‘Greater Learning for Women.’
Really, my girl, you will find there is even a satisfaction in
unselfishness.”
Two red spots, hectic and feverish, stole into the waxen cheeks of the
young wife. Her fingers writhed mechanically. Her eyes were riveted in
fascination upon the face of the one who had tormented her now for so
long. Wayward, passionate, savage impulses swept over her. She felt an
intense longing to strike out—just once!
Something was touching her hand. Her fingers closed spasmodically about
Gonji’s. A sob rose stranglingly in her throat, but she held herself
stiffly erect. Death, she felt, would be preferable, rather than that
they should see how she was suffering.
The mother-in-law’s voice droned on monotonously:
“I have been well advised in the matter. Yes, I even called in the
counsel of your uncle, Ohano,” turning toward Ohano, who was
affectionately waiting upon her. “When your father returns, my children,
there shall be a family council. Be assured, Moonlight, that, whatever
comes, you will be properly supported by the Saito family for the rest
of your days, though I have no doubt at all but that you will shortly
marry. With a dowry from the Saito and a pretty face—well, a pretty face
often accomplishes astonishing things. See the case of our own son. It
was apparent to every one he was bewitched, obsessed! He would have his
way! Contemplated suppuku! Forgot his duty to his parents, his
ancestors—forgot that in Japan duty is higher than love. He made great
promises. Well, we listened. At the time I bade him ponder the proverb:
‘Beware of a beautiful woman. She is like red pepper!’—will burn, sting,
is death to those who touch her, and—”
“Mother!”
“Is it a new custom to interrupt the head of the house?”
The young man’s voice trembled with repressed feeling, but there was a
certain expression of outraged dignity in his face as he looked at his
mother fairly.
“In the absence of the honorable father, the son is the legitimate head
of the household,” he said.
It was the first time he had spoken thus to her. He had restrained
himself during this last year, for fear of bringing down his mother’s
wrath upon the defenseless head of Moonlight.
The hand that pounded the ash from her pipe trembled now, and her lips
had become a thin, compressed line. She started to arise, but Ohano
sprang to her assistance, and she leaned against the girl as she flung
back, almost snarlingly, the words at her son:
“So be it, august authority! We will await the return of thy father.
_He_ will then decide the fate of this—”
“No, mother,” he broke in, “I make humble apology. Speak your will, but
pity us, your children. We desire to be filial, obedient, but it is
cruel, hard!”
“Hard!” cried his mother, savagely. “Is it harder than for a mother to
see her only son enmeshed in the web of a vile Spider?”
Moonlight had sprung up sharply now. Her eyes were like wells of fire
as, her bosom heaving, she started toward the older woman. A grim smile
distorted the features of the Lady Saito Ichigo. As the girl advanced
toward her, with that unconsciously threatening motion, this old woman
of patrician ancestry neither moved nor retreated a space. In her cold,
sneering gaze one read the disdain of the woman of caste who sees one
whom she deems beneath her betray her lowly origin.
“Moonlight!” She felt herself caught by the shoulders in a grip that
almost pained. She caught but a glimpse of his face. It was livid.
Feeling that he, too, was deserting her, she uttered a loud cry, and
covering her face with her sleeve, she fled from the room.
And all that night she lay weeping and trembling in the arms of her
husband. In vain he besought her not to abandon herself to such wild and
terrible grief. Moonlight was very, very sure, she told him, that all
the gods of the heavens and the seas had deserted her forever and
forever. She dreamed of an abyss into which she was pushed and which
closed inexorably about her, and from which not even the loving arms of
the Lord Saito Gonji could rescue her.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XII
THE quiet that comes before a tempest reigned for a few days in the
household. Like a volcano whose pent-up energy is the more violent from
long repression, it burst its bounds upon the return of the master.
Day and night they renewed the argument. Now Lord Ichigo was in firm
agreement with his wife on the subject. There was no other course.
Moonlight must go. Without descendants, who would there be to make the
offerings and pray for their souls and those of the ancestors?
And again he was won over to his son’s side. Well, it would do no harm
to wait another year. Moonlight was, as they had pointed out, still very
young and healthy. There was every likelihood that she would bear
children.
Lady Saito, however, had set herself stubbornly against all truce. She
was determined now to be rid of the Spider. The wretched geisha-girl,
she alleged, had been forced into their illustrious family through the
mere passion of a boy. It was a matter of humiliation that a child
should have prevailed, in such a contention, over the parents. They
should have vetoed the thing at the outset. Their love for their son
should have but strengthened their resolve. The main thing now was to be
rid of the incubus. The law was perfectly clear upon the matter. Never a
simpler case. Doubtless, it was the workings of the gods, who pitied the
ancestors. Here was a great family threatened with extinction. Should a
thousand illustrious and heroic ancestors then be doomed to the cruelest
of fates because of a notorious Spider woman? It were better, decreed
the stern-minded lady, that the family commit honorable suppuku than
suffer an extinction so contemptible.
Against such a flood of bitter argument and invective the young people
could turn only their tears and their prayers.
* * * * *
Then it seemed as if the very hand of Fate intervened to settle the
matter finally. The war with Russia had begun. The effect of this news
upon the Saito family was electrical. It silenced the storm of cruel
innuendo and abuse. It stopped the battle of words. All saw at once that
the Lord Saito Gonji could now take but one course.
Following the steps of his ancestors, he must of course be in the
foremost ranks of war. It would be his duty, his hope, to give up his
life for the Mikado. Therefore, before leaving for the seat of war, it
would be imperative that he should leave behind him in Japan a lineal
descendant.
There was no need, the parents now felt assured, to speak another word
of urging. Even the young wife, of lowly stock as she was, would see the
necessity now of self-sacrifice.
Dry-eyed, pale, with leaden hearts, the young people now faced each
other. The family had mercifully left them alone.
She sought to entrap his gaze, but persistently, gloomily, he averted
his face. The delusion which had upheld her through all these dizzy,
torturing months, that the gods had chosen one so humble as she to hand
down the race of heroes, had dissolved now into thin air. Alas, how
slender—ah, slenderer than the imaginary web she had spun as the
Spider!—had been her hold upon the all-highest!
“Gonji! My Lord Gonji!” She caught at his hand, entreating his touch.
“Do not turn your head. Speak to me. Pardon me that I have been unable
to serve the ancestors—to please you, augustness!”
“You please me in all things,” he said, roughly. “I _dare_ not look at
you—now!”
“It will give me strength if you will but condescend. The sacrifice will
be sweet, if it gives your lordship pleasure!”
“Pleasure! Gods!”
He broke down completely and, like a child, buried his face upon her
bosom. But no tears came to the relief of the girl. Tremulously,
tenderly, she smoothed his hair.
Presently he put her from him and sat back looking at her now with
hungry, somber eyes. She met his glance with a bright bravery. Their
hands close-locked, they repeated solemnly together the promise to marry
in all the lives yet to come and to travel the final journey to Nirvana
together.
Then:
“There is satisfaction in performing a noble duty,” said he,
automatically.
And she:
“It is a privilege for one so humble to serve the exalted ancestors of
your excellency in even so insignificant a way.”
Silence a moment, during which he tried to speak, but could not. Then he
burst out wildly:
“A thousand august ancestors call to me sternly from the noble past.” He
covered his eyes, lest the wistful, appealing beauty of her face might
cause him to falter. “They entreat me not to extinguish their honorable
spark of life. I am but the honorable custodian of the seed! I cannot
prove recreant to its charge!”
A longer silence fell between them now, and when he dared again to look
at her, he found she smiled, a gentle, brooding smile, such as a gentle
mother might have turned upon him. It irradiated and made beautiful
beyond words her thin little face.
“I will speak to my father!” he cried out, wildly. “It is not possible
for me to put you away from me, beloved one!”
He made a savage movement toward her, as though again he would enfold
her within his arms; but now, as he advanced, she retreated, her little
speaking hands held before her, as though she pushed him from her.
“It is—as it should be! You are the all-highest one, and I—but a geisha.
With this little hand I cannot dip up the ocean. I have tried, august
one, and—and—its waters have engulfed me!”
“I go to service of Tenshi-sama!” he cried, hoarsely. “We may never meet
again in this honorable life, but, ah, there are a thousand lives we can
be sure to share together!”
“A—thousand—lives—together!” she repeated, her eyes closed, her face as
white as one dead.
Slowly, feeling backward with her hands, she groped her way to the
shoji. There she paused a moment and looked at her husband, a long,
deep, enveloping look.
He heard the sliding doors trapped between them, and listened vainly for
even the softest fall of her footsteps. But the geisha moves with the
silence of a moth, and the one who had gone from him forever, as it
seemed, had broken her wings against his heart.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIII
SO the Lord Saito Gonji went to Tokio the following day, and immediately
the machinery of law, which grinds less slowly in Japan than in many
other countries, was set in motion. All that wealth, power, influence
could do to hasten matters was brought to bear. Presently the wife of
Lord Gonji was divorced by her husband’s parents and legally barred from
the home of his ancestors.
No one knew where she had gone. Disregarding and refusing all the
charitable and gracious offers and promises of present or future aid,
she disappeared upon the night of her last interview with her husband,
going without even the customary ceremonious leave-taking.
Even her going, pointed out the relatives, was proof of her
unworthiness. The daughter of a samourai would have departed with a
certain submissive dignity and grace, and, whatever her lacerated
feelings, would have proclaimed her pleasure in the act of the superior
ones. But the geisha-girl fled in the night, like one who goes in fear
and shame.
Meanwhile Ohano was duly taken to Tokio. Here in the presence of a host
of triumphantly joyous and exultant relatives she was married at last to
the Lord Saito Gonji.
Here, like a dutiful wife, she remained in the capital by her husband’s
side, awaiting the summons which would take him from her and give him
eternally to the Emperor.
As a little boy Gonji had been, in a way, fond of Ohano. She was of that
chubby, sulky type that a small boy delights to tease. Time had changed
very little the form and disposition of Ohano; but what in a child had
appealed to his humorous affection, in a woman proved not merely
tiresome but repellent. Mere unadorned flesh has little attraction for
one of a naturally poetic and visionary temperament. Even the slight
affection he had felt for Ohano as a child had now entirely disappeared.
It was with an element of positive loathing that he regarded the girl he
had married. When his mind reverted to the one he had forsaken on her
account, he was filled with such overwhelming despair that it seemed as
if he must injure himself—but for the mighty events in which he tried
vainly to plunge his mind.
No soldier in all the Emperor’s service, though animated with the most
lofty patriotism and excitement as the times demanded, seized upon the
cause with such fanatic zeal as Lord Gonji. Day and night he was among
his men. When not in some way improving their equipment and physical
condition, he was arousing and stimulating their ardor and patriotism.
People pointed with pride to the young man’s heroic ancestry, and
prophesied that in his young body still glowed that wonderful spark
which would give to Japan another hero, and assure for all under him
glorious victory and triumph.
It seemed as if it were impossible for him to leave his men even to
return to his temporary home for rest and sleep. The prayers and
entreaties of his mother and of his new wife fell upon deaf ears. Vainly
they besought him, in the short time he was yet to be in Japan, to
remain as much as possible in their company. They were sacrificing him
for all time. Surely even exalted Tenshi-sama (the Mikado) would not
begrudge to them the little, precious moments he might yet spend in
Japan.
Gonji looked at the pleading women with blank, cold eyes. Then,
abruptly, he would return to his labors.
Never since the day they had married him to Ohano had he voluntarily
addressed a single word to his wife. When forced finally at night to
return to her sole company, he would creep back stealthily to the house
like some guilty wretch entering upon some infamous errand. There,
always, he found her patiently, dutifully awaiting his coming.
“My dear lord,” she would humbly say, “though it is very late, I pray
you feed the honorable insides. Permit the honorable interior to wait
upon your excellency.”
He ignored the tray of viands thus nightly tendered him as completely as
he did her words; but when she made officious efforts to assist him to
undress, kneeling in the attitude of a servant or the lowliest of wives,
to wash his feet, he would quietly push her to one side, just as though
she were some article that stood in his pathway.
Sometimes he would point silently to his wife’s couch, thus sternly
bidding her retire. When this was accomplished, he would lie down beside
her, and not till the heavy, even, healthy breathing of Ohano proclaimed
she slept would he close his own weary eyelids.
Beside Ohano’s blooming, satisfied face (for with feminine logic Ohano
set her husband’s curious treatment of her down to his absorption in the
war matter, and thus in the proud knowledge of possession still found
happiness), he conjured up always that thin, white, wistful one, whose
long dark eyes had drawn the very heart out of his breast from the
moment they had first looked into his own.
Sometimes in the night he would arise, to tramp frenziedly up and down,
as he pictured the fate that might have befallen the beloved Moonlight.
What had become of her? Whither had she gone? How would she fare, now
that, penniless and without even her old employment (for now in time of
war the geishas were in reduced circumstances), she had been cast
adrift?
He cursed his own folly in not having foreseen the way in which she
would go; for not having provided for her, forced her to accept at least
monetary assistance of some kind from his family.
His agents had assured him she had not returned to Matsuda; neither had
a trace been found of her in any of the geisha-houses of Tokio or Kioto.
Whither, then, had she gone? A sick fear seized upon him that she had
started upon the Long Journey alone, without waiting for him, who had
promised to tread it with her. He knew that he would never know a
moment’s peace till the time when, face to face, they should meet each
other upon the Long Road which has no ending.
Thus the wretched nights passed, giving the unhappy man little or no
rest; and that he might not encounter the ingratiating smiles and
questions of Ohano, he would depart hurriedly ere she awoke, and plunge
into the war preparations with renewed fervor and desperation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIV
THE days stretched into weeks; the weeks into months. It is not possible
to account for the various delays that arise in time of war.
Four months had passed since his marriage to Ohano, when at last the
welcome summons came. His honorable regiment was to go to the front!
Gonji felt like one released from a cruel bondage. His very heart leaped
within him like a mad thing. Even to Ohano he spoke, and although his
words had a deep ulterior meaning, she was gratified and elated. They
stood as a proof at least to her of her elevation. He had noticed her!
Undoubtedly she had leaped forward a thousand paces in the estimation of
her lord. He recognized her importance now at the crucial moment.
Naturally vain and proud, Ohano’s mind had been entirely concerned with
the attention she was attracting from all as the wife of the Lord Saito
Gonji. People pointed her out as she rode abroad in the lacquered
carriages of the Saito family, and everywhere was recounted the
illustrious history of his ancestors and of her own important mission,
now when the last of the exalted race was sacrificing his life for
Japan.
And now her lord himself had condescended to notice her, and for the
first time his somewhat wild eyes had looked at Ohano with an element of
gentleness and kindness. His words were curious, and long after he was
gone to the city Ohano turned them over in her mind and pondered their
meaning; and when, that night, he returned to her for the last time, she
begged him to repeat them, saying that the presence of the
parents-in-law had confused her hearing. She wished rightly and clearly
to understand his words, so that when he was quite gone from her she
might the better carry out his wishes.
With solemn dignity he repeated the instructions:
“Take care of your honorable health and of that of my descendant. Choose
wisely a companion upon the Long Journey, for it is lonely to travel.
The world is peopled with many souls, but only two may travel the final
path together.”
Again she pondered the words, and she shivered under her husband’s
melancholy glance. What did the strange words imply? Consideration for
her future merely? Surely he must know that, as the wife of one so
illustrious as he must become, she would never marry another in his
place. (Every Japanese woman resigns her husband to war service with the
proud and pious belief and hope that he will not return, but will
gloriously sacrifice life for the cause.)
Finally she said, as she watched his face stealthily:
“It will be unnecessary for the humble one to choose another companion.
Glorious will be the privilege of awaiting the time when she will join
your honor on the journey.”
He gave her a deep look, which seemed to pierce and search to the very
depths of her heart.
“Ohano,” he said, “_thou_ knowest I did not marry thee save for the time
of this life.”
She sat up stiffly, mechanically, moistening her dry lips. All the petty
vanity with which she had upheld herself since the day when she had
married Saito Gonji now seemed to drop from her in shreds. Her many days
of supreme devotion, and even adoration, for the Lord Gonji—and they
stretched back as far as her childhood days—came up to torture her.
Looking into her husband’s face, Ohano knew, without questioning, who it
was who would make the final precious journey with him. She was to be
wife only for the short span of his lifetime. That other one, the
Spider—whose image in effigy she had pricked so mercilessly with a
thousand spiteful pins in order to destroy her soul, as she fain would
have done her body—_she_ was to be the wife of Saito Gonji for all time!
She who had stolen him from Ohano upon her very wedding-night!
Her face became convulsed. The eyes seemed to have disappeared from her
face. Presently, breathing heavily, her hands clutching her breast to
repress the emotion which would show despite her best efforts:
“I pray you permit your humble wife to attend your lordship upon the
journey,” she said. “Who else is competent to travel at your side, my
lord?”
He did not answer her. He was looking out of an open shoji, and his face
in the moonlight seemed as if carved in marble, so set, so rigid,
immovable as that of one dead.
Ohano rose desperately to her feet. She felt unspeakably weak from the
excess of her inner passion. At that moment gladly would she have
exchanged places with the homeless and outcast wife of Saito Gonji, who
in the end was to come to that eternal bliss so rigorously denied to
Ohano.
She caught at her husband’s hand. He drew it up into his sleeve. There
had never been any caresses between them. Always he seemed rather to
shrink from contact with her.
“Lord, let us call a family council,” she cried, shrilly. “Let them
decide where is my proper place, Lord Saito Gonji. It is not for the
time of one life only that we marry. I have plighted my troth to you for
all time!”
Slowly he turned; and the deep, penetrating look scorched Ohano again.
“And I,” he said, “have plighted my troth with another.”
“Lord, it was dissolved,” she cried, breathlessly, “by the honorable
laws of our land. The Spider is now an outcast. Ah!”—her voice rose
shrilly on the verge of hysteria—“it is said—it is known—proved by those
who know—that now—now she is an inmate of the Yoshiwara. She—”
He had gripped her so savagely by the shoulder that she cried aloud in
pain. At her cry he threw her from him almost as if she had been some
unclean thing. She fell upon her knees, and upon them crept toward him,
stretching out her hands and beating them futilely together.
“My Lord Gonji! My husband! I am your honorable wife before all the
eight million gods of the heavens and the seas. It is impossible to
forsake me. I will not permit it. I will cling to your skirts and
proclaim my rights—ah, yes, to the very doors of Hades, if need be!”
He seemed not even to hear her. With his face thrust out like one who
dreams, he was recalling a vision. It was the face of Moonlight as he
had seen it last with that exalted, spiritual expression of
self-sacrifice and adoration upon it. _She_ an inmate of the cursed
Yoshiwara! The thought was grotesque, so horrible that a short laugh
came to his lips.
He strode by the agonized woman on the floor without a further word, and
sharply snapped the folding doors between them. This was their farewell.
As he passed down the street, on his way to join his regiment, he was
halted by the throngs pressing on all sides. The whole country seemed to
be abroad in the streets. The people marched about carrying banners, and
even the little children seemed to have caught the spirit of Yamato
Damashii (the Soul of Japan), and stammered their little banzais in
chorus. It was an inspiring sight, and he wandered about for some time,
with no particular purpose, unconscious where he was, in what direction
his feet carried him, following the throngs as they pushed along through
the streets.
Suddenly he came to where the lights were brighter; and the sounds of
revelry seemed to shriek at the very gates. Gonji paused, concentrating
his attention for the first time upon the place.
All at once it dawned upon him that he was before the gates of the
Yoshiwara! The words of Ohano seemed to ring in his ears. As if to shut
out their loud outcry, he covered his ears and sped like a madman down
the street. He swore to his very soul that it was an accursed lie Ohano
had uttered, and yet—
He stopped suddenly and threw a furtive, agonized glance toward the
infernal “city.” Then his head drooped down upon his breast and he
staggered toward the barracks like one who has been wounded mortally.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XV
“LET us go outside. See, many of the citizens stand on the roofs of the
cars. We can see nothing from here.”
Thus coaxed Ohano. With Gonji’s parents she was traveling, their train
running parallel with another crowded with the departing troops. The
trains moved slowly, for all the country had come to see the departing
ones and to acclaim them with loud banzais.
Lady Saito’s hard features were unrecognizable because of their swollen
and agonized appearance. She allowed the younger woman to support her
and finally draw her outside. The people made way respectfully for them.
Every one knew their history—knew, moreover, of the sacrifice they were
making in giving up the only son, and of how generously they had
contributed to the war fund. Here were the brave, patriotic father and
mother! Here the young and beautiful wife.
Ohano’s round cheeks were pink with excitement. She had forgotten, for
the time being at least, her last interview with her husband. The
excitement of the situation, the murmured admiration and respect of
those about her, upheld her. There was almost an element of enjoyment
mingled with her excitement, as her eyes wandered eagerly over the
crowds.
The train bearing the troops moved a bit swifter along its course, and
the fourth car came opposite to that on the platform of which stood the
Saito family.
“There he is! There he is!” cried Ohano, excitedly; and she leaned far
out, restrained by the solicitous hand of her father-in-law, and, waving
her silk handkerchief, called to her husband by name:
“Gonji! Gonji! My Lord Gonji!”
“My son!” moaned the aged woman, unable longer to restrain her feelings.
Stoically, and with no sign of the ache within her, she had parted from
her son. Japanese women send their men on perilous journeys with smiles
upon their lips, even while their hearts are breaking; but now, as the
mother saw the train carrying away the only child the gods had given
her, the tension broke. She clung moaning to her husband and her
daughter-in-law.
For the first time, as she saw the thin profile of the young man in the
window of the car opposite, she was seized with an overwhelming sense of
remorse. What happiness had she ever helped to bring into the life of
her boy? She had put him from her after the manner of a Spartan woman
while he was yet in tender years. She had done this fiercely, heroically
as she believed, fearing that otherwise she might not sufficiently do
her duty to both him and the ancestors. But now—now! He was going from
her forever! She had given him to the Emperor! Soon her terrible prayer
that he might give his young life in service for his Emperor and country
might indeed be answered.
She felt very old, very feeble, and utterly forsaken and forlorn. Even
as she looked through tear-blinded eyes at her son there came vividly
before her memory the pale and tragic face of the young and outcast wife
he had loved so passionately. She burst into a loud cry, stretching out
her arms frantically:
“Oh, my son! Oh, my son!”
In the opposite train Gonji raised his head, saw his people, but,
possibly because of the crowds and the intervening glass pane, did not
notice their intense anguish. He smiled, bowed, and made a slight motion
of salute with his hand.
His mother was silenced, and remained staring at him like one turned to
stone. Ohano’s face fell, and she stood like a pouting child unjustly
punished. He had not even risen in his seat nor so much as opened the
window.
Both trains had now come to a standstill at the little suburban station.
Crowds of people swarmed over the platform, some even climbing the steps
of the troop-train and penetrating into the cars themselves. A band
began to beat out the monotonous droning music of the national hymn.
Windows were raised, caps lifted, and cheering ensued for a time. But
still the Lord Gonji remained unmoved, not rousing from the moody
reverie into which he seemed plunged, and casting not even a glance in
the direction of the party that watched him so eagerly from across the
way: so oblivious and indifferent to his surroundings did he seem.
Suddenly an officer in the seat behind him leaned over and spoke to him.
His family saw Gonji start as if he had been struck. Turning about
quickly in his seat, he tore at the fastenings of the window. Now he
leaned far out, his ears strained, his eyes searching above the vast
crowds without.
They watched him curiously, following his gaze. His lips moved; he
seemed about to leap from the window, but was held back by the
restraining hand of his brother-officer, and the train began to move
rapidly.
A hush had fallen not alone upon the family of the Saito, but on the
throngs pressing on all sides. As if compelled, their united gaze
followed that of the seemingly entranced Gonji.
Upon a little hillock a short space removed from the station, one lone
figure stood out, silhouetted against the clear blue sky. Her kimono was
of a vermilion color, embroidered with dragons of gold. Gold, too, was
her obi, and in the bright sunlight her scarlet fan and the poppies in
her hair flashed like sparks of fire.
To the crowds in the valley below, surging like a swarm of sheep all
along the railway-tracks, following the troop-trains, their hoarse
cheers mingling with that of the beating drums and the chanting of the
national hymn, she seemed a symbol of triumph, an exquisite omen of
victory to come!
Some one shouted her name aloud:
“The glorious Spider of the House of Slender Pines!”
“Nay,” cried another, “it is the vision of the Sun Lady herself!”
The soldiers, too, saw her, and began to cheer, their wild banzais
ringing out triumphantly and reaching the geisha on the hill.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVI
ON a day in the season of greatest heat, a few months after the going of
Lord Saito Gonji to the front, there staggered up the tortuous and
winding pathway, which climbed the mountain-side to where the House of
Slender Pines rested as on a cliff, a curious figure. She was garbed in
the conventional dress of the geisha, and the burning sun, beating down
upon the little figure, showed the gold of her wide obi and the
glittering vermilion of her kimono.
Something bound to the woman’s neck and back seemed to crush her almost
double beneath its weight, and she clung weakly to the stumps of tree
and bush as she made her way along.
It seemed almost, to the geishas sitting in the cool shade of the
pavilion, that she dragged herself along on her hands and knees.
One ceased strumming upon the samisen, and a dancer, idly illustrating a
few new gestures to the admiring apprentices, stopped in the middle of a
movement.
Omi suddenly screeched and caught at the sleeve of the dancer. No one
moved or spoke. They stood dumbfounded, staring with unbelieving eyes at
the Spider, as she crept up the last height and dropped in silent
exhaustion in their midst. There, with the glowing sun beating
mercilessly down upon her, entangled in her glimmering gown, she lay
like a great dead butterfly.
There was a stir among the geishas. Eyes met eyes in meaning, shocked
glances; but still, from custom, they were voiceless.
Suddenly the little Omi began to run about like one bereft of her
senses. One moment she knelt by her former mistress; the next she sought
to awaken the chaperon, shaking and pounding that enormously stout and
somnolent lady. Several maids now joined her, and they ran about in
panic-stricken circles, uncertain what to do. Matsuda was absent. The
poor, mindless Okusama was indoors, playing and talking with her
countless dolls, quite oblivious of all about her. Should they go to
her? Would she understand?
Omi finally darted into the house, and, dragging the Okusama from her
dolls, drew her out into the sunlight. For a moment the demented
creature stared with a puzzled, troubled look at the form upon the
ground. Then she began to utter strange little inarticulate cries and
threw herself upon the body of the Spider.
She seemed suddenly to regain all of her lost senses. She felt the
geisha’s hands, listened to her heart, screamed for water, and tore at
the object upon the Spider’s back, drawing it warmly to her own bosom.
One maiden brought water, another a parasol, another a fan, while Omi
supported Moonlight’s head upon her lap. One vied with the other in
performing some service for the one they all had loved.
Presently the heavy eyes of the Spider opened, and, dazedly, she
appeared to recognize the faces of those about her. A faint smile crept
to her white lips. But the smile quickly faded, and a piteous look of
commingled fear and pain stole over her wan little face. She put back
her hands to her neck and started up, moaning. Loving arms were about
her. They reassured her that all about her were friends, and showed her
her baby, where, safe and sweet, it rested in the bosom of the Okusama.
Then for a long time she lay with her eyes closed, a look of peace, such
as comes after a long, exhausting race, upon her face.
Later, when, refreshed and stronger, she rested among the geishas in the
pavilion, she weakly and somewhat incoherently told them the story of
her wanderings.
At first she had found employment under another name in a tea-house of
the city of Tokio; but it was not in the capacity of geisha, for she
knew the agents of her husband sought among all the houses of the two
cities for a geisha answering her description. Moreover, she had not the
heart nor the strength to follow her old employment. So she had worked
in the humble capacity of seamstress to a geisha-house in Tokio, near by
the very barracks where her husband daily went. Every day she had seen
him, unseen by him. She had even heard his inquiries of the master of
the house for one answering her description. But no one had thought of
the pale and shrinking little sewing woman, who so humbly served the
geishas, as the famous one they sought.
Then the war had caused business stagnation everywhere in Tokio, and the
first to suffer were the geishas. Patrons now were few, confined mostly
to members of the departing regiments.
Moonlight’s strength at this time had begun to fail her. Her work was
unsatisfactory. She was dismissed. Now, at this time, when it was too
late to please the Lord Saito Gonji and all his august ancestors, she
had made the astonishing discovery, which she had not known when with
him: that she was to become a mother!
Unable, even had she so desired, to return to the house of the Saitos,
scorning to accept even the smallest help from the family which had
divorced her, turned away from every place where she sought employment
because of her condition, she had been reduced to the direst necessity.
Indeed she, the once celebrated Spider, the wife of the noble Lord Saito
Gonji, had become a miserable mendicant, hovering on the outskirts of
the temples and the tea-houses, seeking, in the garb of her late
calling, now worn and tattered, as they saw, for pity and charity. After
long and tortuous wanderings, she had at last managed to return to
Kioto. She wandered out into the hills in search of the House of Slender
Pines.
In a secluded and quiet little corner of a seemingly deserted and
unexplored hill she had found at last a refuge in a diminutive temple,
where a lonely priestess expiated the sins of her youth by a life of
absolute solitude and piety. Here Moonlight’s child was born. Here she
might still have been, but the aged nun had finished her last penance
and had gone to join the ones the gods loved in Nirvana. The geisha had
set out again, in search of her former home, and now she bore her baby
on her back. Without funds to pay for a jinrikisha, she had traveled
entirely on foot. The journey had been long, the sun never so hot, but,
ah! the gods had guided her feet unerringly, and here at last she was in
their midst!
She looked at the Okusama, whispering to the little head against her
lips; at Omi, holding her hands in a strangling grasp and making violent
contortions of her face in an effort to keep back the tears; at the
geishas and maidens, with their pretty faces running over with tears.
Then she sighed and smiled.
The Okusama seemed to remember something of a sudden. She started upon
her knees, clapping her hands violently.
“Hurry, maidens!” she cried, shrilly. “The most honorable Spider
requires new apparel! Wait upon her quickly and excellently!”
Omi whirled around in a dizzy circle, and she danced every step of the
way to the house. Inside they heard her singing, and a moment later
berating and scolding the maid who was to wait upon her mistress.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVII
RETURNING from a fruitless canvass for patrons for his house, Matsuda
was in an evil mood. The times were bitter. Upon every tongue was heard
but the one topic—the war! The gayest and most spendthrift of youths
turned a deaf ear to the geisha-keeper’s descriptions of the exceptional
beauty and talents of his maidens. The clash of drum and arms had a more
alluring call to the men of Japan than the most charming song ever sung
by geisha; and the glittering sun-flag, tossing aloft from every roof
and tower, was more enchanting to their sight than the brightest pair of
eyes or reddest lips of which the master of the geishas told.
Not a patron in all the city of Kioto for the once famous House of
Slender Pines! Superstitiously its master feared his place was doomed.
At the solicitation of his wife, he had kept the girls despite the hard
times; now he felt he could no longer humor even the Okusama. Matsuda
knew the fate likely to befall the geishas, were they to be turned out
of employment at this time. Unable to obtain positions through the
customary channels of the geisha-houses, they had but one last
resource—the Yoshiwara! Even in war-times the “hell city,” as it was
aptly named, thrived. Against this fate the Okusama had so far shielded
the geishas of the House of Slender Pines, and even now, as he thought
of her, Matsuda debated how he should explain the going of even the
humblest apprentice.
As his jinrikisha wound in and out up the twisting pathway, he noted
through the shadowing trees that the tea-house was brilliantly lighted,
an expense lately considerably cut down by his express orders. The frown
upon his brow grew darker, and his little cruel eyes were like those of
a wild boar.
As he turned into the gates he saw that even the pathway was strung with
lighted lanterns, and from the house itself came the resounding beat of
the triumphant little koto, mingled with the softly humming voices of
the geishas.
The illuminated tea-house, the music, the air of festivity and affluence
puzzled him. It was against his orders, but, perchance, in his absence,
some lofty ones had condescended to patronize his place!
As he stepped from his carriage, the laughing little Omi came running
down to the gate to meet him, a bowl of water splashing in her hands. So
eager she seemed to welcome the master, she barely waited for him to
kick aside his clogs ere she dashed the refreshing water upon his heated
feet.
The geishas prostrated themselves as he passed among them. Wherever he
looked he saw the lights and the evidences of a recent feast; but
nowhere did the master of the geishas see a single guest.
His face had become pastily white, and his little eyes glittered as they
turned from side to side. So far he spoke no word to the offending
geishas. Looking upward, he noted the illuminated second story, while
the lighted takahiras were visible against the massed flowers of the
balconies and the tingling wind-bells. But still, nowhere a guest!
Mystified, his rage deepening, he turned suddenly with a roar toward the
geishas.
So this was the way his servants disported themselves in his absence!
Feasting and celebrating! So be it. They were shortly to learn that
their master carried with him a punishment even more dreadful than the
whip. “The Yoshiwara!” he shouted, raising his clenched fists above his
head. That was the fate reserved for the faithless cattle he had
trusted.
No one stirred. No one spoke. The geishas, still prostrated, kept their
humble heads on the ground. Yet something in their unshrinking attitude
made him see that for some reason they did not realize his words. Like
an animal in pain, he bounced into their midst, his arm upraised to
strike, his foot to kick.
Some one caught at his sleeve and held to it insistently. He turned and
encountered the white, wild face of his wife. Her lips moved
voicelessly, but she clung with tenacity to his sleeve.
For the first time he struck the Okusama—a cruel, savage blow that sent
her staggering back from him. She sprang back to his side, dumbly caught
again at his sleeve with one hand, and pointed steadily upward with the
other.
Matsuda looked and began to shake. There on the widest balcony of the
House of Slender Pines, swaying and tossing like a moth in the wind, the
Spider spun her web.
He wiped his eyes as if to make sure he did not see a vision; but still
the alluring, smiling face of the one who had brought him fortune
glanced at him in the torchlight.
“The Spider!” he cried hoarsely. “She is back!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVIII
OF course, figured Matsuda to himself, even the addition of one so
famous as the Spider could not at once bring fortune to the House of
Slender Pines at war-time. Then, too, there was the honorable child to
sustain.
Not for a moment, Matsuda told himself, did he begrudge or regret the
celebrations in the Spider’s honor rightly insisted upon by his wife.
Undoubtedly she was an honorable guest. Still, a poor man, the keeper of
a half-score of geishas, must make proper provision for their future
sustenance and his own old age. If the Spider were, in fact, to prove
her old title of fortune-bringer to the geisha-house, it was necessary
that she begin at once.
So, while the Okusama and the geishas showered the Spider with favors
and waited upon her slightest wish, while the honorable descendant of
the illustrious Saito blood joyously passed from hand to hand, while the
Okusama cast aside her dolls and hovered like a brooding mother over
Moonlight and her baby, Matsuda held his head within his own chamber and
cunningly planned a scheme whereby the Spider’s presence in his house
might be turned to immediate profit.
By his contract with the Saito family, the Spider was released from
bondage. Hence she was not entirely bound to serve him. She had already
excited his exasperation by her persistent refusal to dance for
prospective customers the dance by which she had won fame. She desired
to assume another pseudonym, and for a month at least asked that she
might rest and thus regain her strength.
A month! inwardly had snorted Matsuda. Why, even the last batch of
troops would be at the front by then. Japan would be emptied completely
of her men. Now was the time, if ever, to draw patrons to the house,
since the departing soldiers celebrated their going at the most popular
geisha-houses. Only the fact that the House of Slender Pines was some
distance away among the hills kept the soldiers from patronizing it in
preference to those in the city of Kioto. But, could Matsuda venture
down below, proclaiming the fact of the return of the Spider, ah, then
indeed he might be assured of customers for a time at least!
No amount of pleading or reasoning, however, moved the Spider. With the
pitying, solicitous, fond arms of the Okusama about her, she languidly
proclaimed herself still ill, as indeed she looked and was.
So Matsuda chewed on his nails and thought and thought. He thought of
the agents of the young Lord Saito Gonji, who had come to see him at the
time Gonji’s regiment was stationed in Tokio. He thought of the
exorbitant reward temptingly tendered him for any information of the
Spider. How he had cursed his inability to find the girl at that time.
But the young Lord Gonji was gone—gone forever, undoubtedly. Who was
there in all this haughty family, which had disdainfully and
contemptuously cast out from its doors the miserable geisha, who could
now possibly be interested in her lot? Nevertheless, the master of the
geisha-house pondered the matter, and as he did so there came up
suddenly before his mind’s eye the round rosy face of the rightful heir
of all the Saito ancestors. His heart began to thump within him with a
strange excitement. Suddenly he set out upon a journey.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIX
THE ancestral home of the Saitos was situated in the most aristocratic
of the suburbs of Kioto. Walled in on all sides by the evergreen hills
and mountains and sharing in eminence and beauty the most famous of the
temples, the shiro should have proved an ideal retreat for the saddened
female relatives of the Lord Saito Gonji.
Here, with their household reduced to a single man and maid, and
themselves performing menial tasks the more to chasten their spirits, as
had become the custom during this period among the nobility, the mother
and the wife of Saito Gonji lived silently together. For even the father
of Gonji had heard the stern voice of Hachiman, the god of war, and had
taken up arms dutifully in his Emperor’s defense.
No longer was the harsh, sarcastic tongue of the Lady Saito Ichigo heard
in insistent berating of maid and daughter-in-law; nor did the loud,
mirthless laughter of Ohano ring out. Mute, their white faces marked
with the shadow of a fear that fairly ate at their hearts’ core, the two
Saito women plodded along daily together.
For a time, after the going of Gonji, the older woman had waited upon
the younger; but as the days and weeks passed her solicitude for the
health of the young wife slowly diminished, and in its place came a
scorching anxiety to torture the now aging woman.
Not in the sneering tone she had turned upon the hapless Moonlight, but
with the deepest earnestness, she now besought her daughter-in-law daily
to lavish costly offerings at the shrines, and even to drink of the
Kiyomidzu springs! As became a dutiful daughter, the once smiling,
taunting Ohano joined that same melancholy group where once the unhappy
Moonlight had been a familiar figure.
Thus the tragic months passed away. Few if any words now passed between
the Saito women. A wall seemed to have arisen between them. Where
previously the older woman had felt for Ohano an affection almost
equivalent to that of a mother, she now turned wearily from the girl’s
timid effort to appease her. Unlike, however, her treatment of the
Spider, she at least spared the young wife the harsh, nagging,
condemnatory words of reproach and recrimination.
Every morning the selfsame question was asked and answered:
“You were at Kiyomidzu yesterday, my daughter?”
“Hé, honorable mother.”
“And—?”
“The gods are obdurate, alas!”
Lady Saito would mechanically knock out the ash from her pipe and refill
it with her trembling fingers. Then, shaking her head, she would mutter:
“From the decree of heaven there is no escape!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XX
“EVEN a calamity, left alone, may turn into a fortune,” quoted Lady
Saito Ichigo, devoutly, as with her hand trembling with excitement she
filled her pipe.
Ohano listlessly extended the taper to her mother-in-law, and the latter
took several puffs and inhaled with intense satisfaction.
There was something peculiarly still and strange about the attitude of
Ohano. Her eyes seemed almost closed, her lips were a single colorless
line, and there was not a vestige of color in her face. Almost she
seemed like some automaton that was unable to move save when touched.
One of Ohano’s arms was shorter than the other, and this had always been
a sensitive matter to her, so that generally she had carried it hidden
in her sleeve. Now she nursed it mechanically, almost as if it pained,
and twice she extended the lame arm for the taper. Whatever there was
about the girl’s expression or attitude, it aroused the irritation of
the older woman, and she said sharply:
“You perceive the wisdom of the proverb, my girl, do you not?”
Ohano said slowly, as though the words came from her with an effort:
“It is not apropos to our case at all. I do not at all see either the
calamity or the fortune, for that matter.”
Her mother-in-law took her pipe from her mouth and stared at her
amazedly a moment. Then she enumerated events upon her fingers.
“Calamity,” she said, “when my son met the Spider woman. Almost it
seemed as if the gods had forsaken their favorites. What a fate for the
illustrious ancestors—the last of the race married to a geisha!”
Ohano shrugged her shoulders, then averted her face. She had bitten her
lips so that now they seemed to be blistered, and pushed out, thick and
swollen.
“Well,” resumed her mother, triumphantly, “you perceive the workings of
the gods undoubtedly in what followed. The war came like a veritable
miracle. Think; had it come but a few—one or two—months later even, the
Spider would still have been in our house, and, what is more, Ohano,
elevated! Oh, there would have been no enduring the dancer. It is
said”—and she lowered her voice confidently—“that the arrogance and
pride of women of her class is an intolerable thing when once aroused.
An excellent actress was this Spider. Let us admit it. She was prepared
to—wait! She entreated patience for only a few months longer. But, as I
have said, the gods intervened. The war arose! It was found imperative
to return her at once! Hoom! That is right. You may well smile, my girl,
since your turn had come!”
Ohano’s mask-like countenance had broken into a rigid smile of
reminiscence. She recalled the days of her supreme triumph—the casting
out of the one she hated, her own elevation as the wife of the Lord
Saito Gonji. A faint color stole into her cheeks.
“I’ll confess,” continued the mother-in-law, humorously, “that you
proved a less docile and filial daughter.” She chuckled reminiscently.
“It is impossible to forget the humility of the Spider!” She looked at
Ohano fondly. “I will tell you, my girl, I always desired you for my
daughter. Your mother and I were cousins, and do you know—I will tell
you, now that my lord is honorably absent—that it was originally planned
that your father and I should marry.” She scowled and blinked her eyes,
sighing heavily. “Well, schemes fall through!”
For a time she was silent, drowsily pulling at her pipe, which Ohano
mechanically filled and refilled.
Presently Lady Saito laid her pipe down on the hibachi and resumed as if
she had not stopped.
“So much for the calamity—the intervention of the gods that followed.
Now look you, my girl. All the expensive offerings heaped at the shrines
have been in vain. It is my opinion that if you supplicated the gods
till doomsday and drank of the last drop of the Kiyomidzu waters, you
would not now become a mother! Superstitions are for the ignorant. These
are enlightened days, when we fight and beat—and _beat_, Ohano!—the
Western nations! So, now, we supplicate the gods for a solution of the
tragic problem facing us—the extinction of the illustrious race of
Saito. It is impossible for such a race to die!”
Ohano moved uneasily. She had picked up her embroidery frame, and was
attempting to work, but her lips were moving and her hands trembled.
Partly to hide her expression from her mother-in-law, she bent her head
far over the frame. Lady Saito began to laugh quite loudly.
“Never—no, not within the entire span of a lifetime—have I even heard of
such favor of the gods! Just think, Ohano, without the pains and labors
of a mother, they put into your honorable arms a most noble descendant
of the august ancestors. Why, you should extend your arms in perpetual
thanks to all the gods. Was ever such mercy?”
Said Ohano, with her face still hidden by the frame:
“It is said, as you know, that it is easier to beget children than to
care for them!”
Silence a moment. Then she added with sudden passionate vehemence:
“I loathe the task you set me, mother-in-law. It is not possible for me
to carry out your wishes.”
The expression on the older woman’s face should have warned her. The
thin lips drew back in a line as cruel as when previously she had looked
at the hapless Moonlight. Her voice was, if possible, harsher.
“It is better to nourish a dog than an unfaithful child!” she cried, got
to her feet, and, drawing her skirts about her, moved away in stately
dudgeon.
Ohano leaped up also, anxious to repair the injury she had done.
“Mother!” she cried out, chokingly, “put yourself in my place. Would it
be possible for you to cherish in your bosom the child of one you
abhorred?”
Slowly the outraged and angry look faded from Lady Saito’s face. It
seemed pinched and haggard. Her voice was curiously gentle:
“That is possible, Ohano. I have given you an instance in my own
honorable house, for as deeply as I hated your mother, so I have loved
you!”
Ohano’s breath came in gasps. She was losing control of the icy nerve
that had hitherto upheld her. She longed to fling herself upon the
breast of her mother-in-law, who, despite her austere bearing to all,
had always been kind to Ohano. Even as the two looked into each other’s
face the cry of the one they were expecting to arrive was heard outside
the screens. Matsuda had kept his word!
Ohano turned white with despair. She clutched at her throat as though
she were choking and clung for a moment to the screens, her anguished
face turned back toward her mother-in-law.
“It is a crime!” she gasped. “The Spider will come for her child!”
“Let her come,” darkly rejoined Lady Saito. “Who will take the word of a
public geisha against that of the honorable ladies of the house of
Saito?”
“The man—he himself—will betray—it is not possible to close the tongue
of one of the choum class.”
“He is well paid. Moreover, in committing the act he places himself
under the ban of the law. Will he betray himself?”
Lady Saito moved with a curious sense of hunger toward the doors,
outside which, she knew, was the son of her son. For the moment at least
she had forgotten Ohano; but when she found the girl barred her passage
she thrust her ruthlessly aside. Ohano fell upon her knees by the shoji,
and, with her face hidden upon the floor, she began to pray to the gods.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXI
MEANWHILE in the House of Slender Pines there was pandemonium. The
frightened, panic-stricken geishas and maidens fled wildly about,
seeking in every nook and corner of the place for the lost child, while
above their chattering and awe-stricken whispers rose the shrill,
hysterical laughter of the Okusama.
She it was who had lost the child, so she averred, for it was upon her
bosom the little one had slept.
Of all the inmates of the House of Slender Pines, the only one whose
voice had not yet been heard was the geisha Moonlight. She sat in an
upper chamber, her chin pillowed by her folded hands, while her long,
dark eyes stared straight out before her blankly. She had remained in
this motionless position from the moment they had told her of the loss
of her child. Her little apprentice, Omi, fearing that her mistress’s
mind was affected, hung about her in tears, alternately offering bodily
service and seeking to tempt the silent one to eat. But her offices were
ignored or passively endured. The food remained untouched.
Not even the wild crying of the Okusama stirred her, though she could
plainly hear the coaxing voices of the maidens as they sought to
restrain her from flinging herself down the mountain-side.
Later in the day, however, when the Okusama, whose wailing, from sheer
exhaustion, had turned to long gasping sobs, scratched and pulled at the
shoji of the Spider’s room, Moonlight stirred, like one coming out of a
trance, and drew her hand dazedly across her eyes as she listened to the
heartrending words of the Okusama.
“Dearest Moonlight! The honorable little one has gone upon a journey. He
was too beautiful, too exalted for a geisha-house; the gods coveted him.
What shall I do? I pray you speak to me. What shall the Okusama do?”
With the aid of Omi, the geisha slowly arose, and, walking blindly
toward the screens, opened them at last.
At her sudden appearance the maidens supporting and restraining the
Okusama drew back, and even the wild wife of Matsuda stopped her bitter
crying for a moment, for a faint smile was on the lips of the Spider,
and she held out both her hands toward them.
“Silence is good,” she gently admonished. “It is necessary to think.
Help me all, I pray you!”
They followed her into the chamber and seated themselves in a solemn
little circle about her. Presently:
“Last night the honorable Lord Taro slept safe upon your bosom,
Okusama?”
The poor wife of the geisha-keeper clasped her thin hands passionately
upon her breast; but her expression was less wild, her words
intelligible.
“Here, my Moonlight! In my arms, the soft head nestling beneath my
chin—so warm—so—so—so-o—”
She laid her hands in the place where the little head had rested. Her
features worked as if she must again abandon herself to anguished
weeping, but the look on Moonlight’s face restrained her with almost
hypnotic power.
“It was after the going of the master?” she queried, speaking very
slowly and gently, as if thus the better to secure intelligent answers.
“After the going,” repeated the woman. “For good-fortune I held him in
the andon-light, that his honorable face might be the last my lord
should see as he departed.”
“He has gone to the—city?”
“To the city. He contemplated arousing the interest of a departing
regiment in your honorable presence here, but, alas!” She broke down
again, crying out piercingly that the evil ones had come meanwhile in
the absence of the master of the house, and who was there left save
helpless females to seek the august little one?
Moonlight’s chin had fallen into her hands again. She seemed to think
deeply, but the stricken, numb look was gone. Two red spots crept into
her cheeks, and her dark eyes gleamed dangerously.
She was rehearsing in her mind the words and actions of Matsuda since
his return. She was acutely aware of the base character of the
geisha-keeper, and recalled the many times when she had seen him plunged
in calculating thought, pacing and repacing the gardens, gnawing like a
rat at his nails, and ever his eye stealing craftily to her.
Suddenly there came clearly to the geisha what had possessed for days
the mind of the master. Like an illuminating flash from the gods it came
upon her what Matsuda had done with her child.
There arose now before her agonized vision the cruel, scornful face of
the fearful mother-in-law, and beside it the round, envious, malicious
countenance of Ohano. Like a meek, mute fool, she had permitted them to
drive her from her rightful—yes, her legal—home, because she had not
then known her full power. Now they had stolen from her the one link
that bound her inexorably to the beloved dead: for Japanese women
believe their soldiers dead until they return. Little they knew of the
true character of the Spider! She would show them that even one of the
vagabond, despised actor race from which she had come was not to be
trodden upon with impunity.
She sprang to her feet, electrified with her new purpose. The geishas
scattered, alarmed and frightened, on either side of her.
“Okusama!” She caught at the woman’s wandering attention as the latter
raised herself from her prostrate position on the floor.
“My Moonlight?”
“You have jewels—cash, perhaps! Speak!”
The troubled brows of the Okusama drew together, and the vague look of
wandering came back to her eyes. Moonlight dropped on her knees opposite
the woman, and, placing her hands on her shoulders, forced her to look
directly in her face.
“Answer me—speak, Okusama!”
As still the poor creature regarded her vaguely, the geisha whispered
with entreating tenderness:
“Tell me—my—mother!”
Over the wild features of the Okusama a gentle, wistful smile crept.
“What shall I say?” she plaintively whispered.
“Name your possessions. He has given you jewels, money even. Yes, it is
so—is it not?”
The woman nodded. Her lips began to quiver like a child about to cry.
The geishas and the apprentices had crowded in a circle about them, and
now they seemed to hang in suspense upon the words of the Okusama.
“It is—so!” she faintly said.
“Will you not give them to me?” pleaded the Spider. Then, as the woman
drew back timorously, she cried: “Quick, now, while you remember where
they are!”
Her eyes were on the Okusama’s, hypnotically compelling her. Slowly the
woman tottered to her feet. She staggered across the room, supported on
either side by the geishas. She came to the east wall, felt along it
till her fingers found a secret panel, pushed it aside, found an inner
one, and still an inner one, and still an inner one. Then she drew out
the lacquer safe, and, with a conciliating smile trembling over her
vacant features, she opened the casket and poured the jewels into the
lap of the Spider. Moonlight looked at them with glittering eyes of
excitement. Then she spoke to the geishas.
“You all have heard of Oka, the great and just judge of feudal days. You
know how it was he decided the parentage of a child whom two women
claimed. He bade them each take an arm of the girl and pull, and the
strongest should prevail to keep the child. Alas, the poor mother dared
not pull too hard lest she hurt her beloved offspring, and preferred to
resign her child to the impostor. Thus the judge knew she was the true
mother. Maidens, in the city of Kioto there are judges as wise as Oka,
but much money is needed to obtain the services of those who must bring
the cases before them. Come, little Omi, we set out now upon a long and
perilous journey!”
“The gods go with you!” quavered the geishas, wiping their tears upon
their sleeves.
“Ah, may all the gods lead and protect you!” sobbed the Okusama.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXII
THEY were bathing the young Lord Saito Taro: the Lady Saito Ichigo and a
rosy-cheeked country girl who had recently entered the family’s service.
Indeed, the coming of the child had materially altered the regimen of
the household. The servants that had been cast aside, as a pious sign
from the women that they desired to share their lord’s sacrifices during
war-time, were now restored, or their places were filled by new maids.
There was an air of activity throughout the entire estate; the maids
bustled about swiftly, the chore-boy whistled at his toil, and the aged
gateman looked up from the great Western book into which he seemed to
bury his nose at all times.
The little Taro lay upon his grandmother’s lap, and she rubbed his
shining little body with warm towels, tendered by the admiring maids.
There was a curious change in the face of Lady Saito. Almost it seemed
as if an iron had been pressed across her features, smoothing away the
harsh and bitter lines. The eyes had lost their angry luster, and seemed
almost mild and peaceful in expression as she raised them for a moment
to give an order to the nursemaid. She chuckled contentedly when the
baby grasped at her thumb and put it into his diminutive mouth, sucking
upon it with fervor and relish.
Every slight movement of its face or body delighted and moved her to an
emotion new and fascinating. Indeed, she was experiencing in the little
Taro all the maternal emotions she had sternly denied herself with her
own son.
From the moment when she had taken the warm tiny body into her arms
everything within her seemed to have capitulated; this in spite of the
fact that she did not wish to love, had not intended to love, this child
of the Spider!
Now the Spider, and all the bitter animosity and shame she had brought
into the proud family of the Saitos, were forgotten. This was the child
of her son, the Lord Saito Gonji! Its eyes were the eyes of her son—its
mouth, its chin, even its gentle expression; she traced hungrily every
seeming likeness, and proclaimed the fact that her son had indeed been
reborn to her in the little Taro.
The youngest of the nursemaids was a bright-eyed, somewhat forward girl
who had obtained employment recently by cajoling the honorable cook, now
factotum of the household. In the eyes of Ochika, wife of the cook, the
girl was an impudent minx, who should have been sent flying from a
respectable household. Ochika even penetrated from her domain of the
kitchen, to the presence of the Lady Saito Ichigo, in order to whisper
into the lady’s somewhat absent ear a tale of unseemly dances and songs
indulged in by the nursemaid for the delectation of the other servants.
Omi (the nurse-girl’s name) seemed, however, so innocent and childish in
appearance that the Lady Saito was loath to believe her guilty of
anything more than a naughty desire to tease Ochika, whose jealousy of
her good-looking husband was so notorious among the servants that it was
a never-failing source of both merriment and strife. What, however, in
Omi recommended her chiefly to the fond grandmother was the fact that
the honorable Lord Taro appeared to love her, and was never so happy as
when upon his nurse’s back.
Now, as Omi danced her hand playfully across his round and shining
little stomach, Taro roared with delight, and tossed up his tiny pink
heels in approbation. So noisy, so continued, so absolutely joyous was
his crowing laughter that the face of his grandmother melted into a
smile.
The smile, however, wavered uneasily and was soon suppressed as Ohano
silently entered the room. The girl’s face was ashen in color, her eyes
more like mere slits than ever. She stood leaning against the shoji, her
expression sullen and lowering, her attitude similar to that of a
spoiled and angry child.
“Ohayo gozarimazu!” murmured the mother-in-law, politely; and she was
angrily aware of the conciliating tone in her voice, she who was
accustomed to command.
“Ohayo!” The girl flung back the morning greeting, almost as if it were
a challenge.
“Well,” said her mother, sharply. “Be good enough to take the place of
Omi. It will do your heart good to rub the honorable body of your”—she
paused and met the scowling glance of Ohano—“your lord’s child,” she
finished.
Omi was tendering the towels; but Ohano ignored the pert little maid.
She crossed the room deliberately and slowly sank upon her knees
opposite Lady Saito and the baby. Omi was watching the scene with
absorbed interest, and she jumped at the sharp voice of Lady Saito.
“To your other duties, maiden!” admonished her mistress, conscious of
the fact that the girl was watching Ohano intently.
Alone with the child and Ohano, she began in a complaining voice:
“Now it is most uncivilized to permit one’s emotions to show upon the
honorable face, which should be a mask as regards all inner feelings. I
advise stern control of all angry impulses. Cultivate graciousness of
heart, and do not forget each day properly to thank the gods for putting
into your arms the honorable child of your lord.”
Said Ohano in a breathless whisper, while her bosom heaved up and down
tempestuously:
“He is the child of the—Spider! Take care lest he sting thy breast too,
mother-in-law!”
The older woman drew the warm towels about the baby, almost as if for
protection.
“He is my son’s child,” she said, hoarsely. “Envy and malice are traits
we women are warned repeatedly against in the ‘Greater Learning for
Women.’”
“He is the Spider’s child!” almost chanted Ohano, and she put her lame
hand to her throat as though it pained her. “His eyes are identical with
hers!”
“Nay,” said her mother-in-law, gently; “then you have not looked into
the eyes of the little one. I pray you do so, Ohano. It will soften your
heart, for, see, they are duplicates of the eyes of your lord!”
She turned the child’s head about so that its smiling, friendly glance
met Ohano’s.
For a moment the latter stared at him, her lips working, her eyes
widened. The baby had paused in his laughter and was studying the
working features of his stepmother with infantile gravity. Almost
unconsciously, as if fascinated, she bent lower above him, and as she
did so he reached up a little hand and grasped at her face. A smile
broke over his rosy features, displaying the two little teeth within and
showing every adorable dimple encrusted in its fair features.
The breath came from Ohano in gasps. All of a sudden she threw up her
arm blindly, almost a motion of defense. Then with a wordless sob she
put her face upon the floor. She wept stormily, as one whose whole
forces are bent upon finding an outlet. For a time there was no sound in
the chamber save that of the moaning Ohano.
The child had fallen asleep, and Lady Saito kept her eyes fixed upon his
round, charming little face. She would let Ohano’s passion spend itself.
These daily outbursts since the coming of the child were becoming
intolerable, she thought. She had been too lenient with Ohano. It would
be necessary soon to teach the girl her exact position in the household.
As she looked at the beautiful, sleeping child the sudden thought of
parting with it seized horribly upon her. Her face twitched like some
hideous piece of parchment suddenly animated with life. Nothing, she
told herself fiercely—neither the clamoring voice of the wild mother,
nor the sulky jealousy of Ohano—should cause her now to relinquish her
hold upon the descendant of the illustrious ancestors. Let the Spider do
her worst! Let the vindictive jealousy of Ohano betray to the world the
truth! She, the Lady Saito Ichigo, would defy them all. The gates of
Saito should be sealed and guarded as rigorously as if these were feudal
days. As for Ohano! She looked at the girl with a new expression.
Between her and the little one resting upon her bosom there could be but
one choice.
“My girl,” she said to Ohano, finally, “dry your face, if you please. It
is unseemly for one of gentle birth to abandon one’s self to passion.
Come, come, there is a limit to my patience!”
Ohano sat up sullenly, drying her eyes with the ends of her sleeve. The
Lady Saito was choosing her words carefully, and her stern glance never
wavered as she bent it upon Ohano’s quivering face.
“Without my lord’s child, Ohano, you are but a cipher in the house of
the ancestors. It would become necessary to serve you as once we served
an innocent one before you!”
Ohano’s hand clutched at her bosom. She appeared to be suffocating, and
could hardly speak the words:
“You do not mean—you dare not mean—that you would divorce me!”
“The law is clear in your case, as in that of your predecessor,” said
her mother, coldly.
“I will speak to my uncle Takedo Isami. I will address all of my
honorable relatives. I will tell them with what you have threatened me,
the daughter of samourai! You have compared me with a geisha—a Spider!
It is intolerable—not to be borne!”
“Nay,” vigorously defended her mother-in-law. “You speak not now of a
geisha, Ohano, but—of—the mother of the last descendant of the
illustrious ancestors.”
A silence fell between them, broken only by the breathing of
Ohano—short, gasping, indrawn sobs which she seemed no longer able to
control.
Presently, when she was quieter, her mother-in-law put a question
roughly to the girl.
“What is it to be, Ohano? Will you accept the child of the Lord Saito
Gonji, proclaiming it to be your own, defying the very world to take it
from you, or—?”
Ohano’s face was turned away. Her head was swimming, and she felt
strangely weak. After a moment she said in a very faint voice, as if the
last trace of resistance within her had been victoriously beaten out by
her mother-in-law:
“I serve the ancestors of the Saito—and my Lord Saito Gonji!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXIII
OHANO did not leave her room all of the following day. A maid brought
word to Lady Saito that her daughter-in-law wished to meditate and pray
alone. Permission was somewhat ungraciously granted. Her “moods,” as
Lady Saito termed them, had become a source of irritation. However, the
proposition to “meditate and pray” was good. Ohano, perchance, would
profit by her thoughts and emerge a reasonable being.
At noon the soft-hearted little Omi begged to be permitted to take tea
and refreshments to Ohano. She was gone some time, to the aggravation of
her mistress, for the little Taro was loudly demanding his favorite’s
return. When at last, however, the girl returned, she brought such a
message to her mistress that the latter forgot everything else in the
glow of satisfaction. Ohano asked for the Lord Saito Taro.
Little Omi hurried out with the child in her arms. She paused upon the
threshold for a moment and threw a curious glance back at her mistress.
Lady Saito’s face was wreathed in smiles, even while the tears dropped
like rain down her withered cheeks. The girl hid her excited face
against the child’s little body, then, almost running, she sped from the
room.
It was very lonely for Lady Saito the rest of that day. She did not wish
to disturb Ohano, but how hungrily her heart longed for the return of
her baby! How she missed it, even during the short period it had been
gone.
In the middle of the afternoon, when she had fallen into a drowsy
reverie upon her mat, she was disturbed by the sudden shoving aside of a
screen behind her. She turned her head and saw in the aperture the
agitated face of Kiyo, the gateman. He had fallen to his knees, and now
crawled on them toward her. Something in his abject attitude awoke
within the breast of his mistress a sickening fear of a calamity he had
come to report. She felt as if paralyzed, unable either to stir or to
utter a word.
Undoubtedly the gateman brought bad tidings, for his place was not in
the house, and it was an unheard-of thing for one in his position to
force his way into the august presence of the mistress. She said to
herself:
“He has come to report the death of my dear son or of my husband!”
Vainly she put back her hand for the support of Ohano, but the girl was
still secluded in her chamber.
“Speak!” she gasped, at last. “I command you not to hesitate!”
Despite the peremptory words, she was shaking like one in an illness.
Her knees gave way. She sank down upon them in a collapsed heap. She
looked entreatingly at the retainer, who seemed unable or unwilling to
answer her.
“You bring exalted and joyous news from Tenshi-sama!” she cried,
brokenly. “I pray you speak the words!”
“Nay, mistress!” His tremulous old voice shook, and he could not control
the shaking of his aged limbs. He had been in the service of the Lady
Saito since her babyhood. “It is of the youngest Lord Saito I speak!”
“My son! Gonji!”
“Thy honorable grandson, mistress,” he corrected.
She stared at him, aghast.
“Baby-san!” She was upon her feet now, with the strength and savagery of
a mother at bay. “He is here in the shiro!”
The gateman looked at her mutely.
“He has been stolen—by the maiden Omi. It is said she was in the service
of the first Lady Saito Gonji.”
For a moment Lady Saito stared at the man with unbelieving eyes.
Suddenly she clapped her hands loudly, but no smiling-faced,
sharp-tongued Omi came running fleetly to her service. Only the
swollen-eyed wife of the cook crept into the room.
“_Thou_ knowest where—” She could not continue. Her words choked her.
“Nay, I do not know,” burst out Ochika. “She was an imp of the lowest
Hades. Maledictions upon her! May Futen tear her flesh!”
“Hush!” cried Lady Saito, with a sudden violence; and almost aloud she
shouted the words:
“It is the rod of the gods! From the decree of Heaven there is no
escape!”
She became conscious that Ohano was beside her. She looked at the girl
strangely, and as she did so something in Ohano’s eyes revealed the
truth to her. She shrank from her daughter-in-law with a motion almost
of loathing.
“Why, Ohano!” she cried. “It was _thou_ who sent for—it is—”
Ohano turned from her abruptly and moved briskly toward the gateman.
“It was thy duty,” she haughtily censured, “to pursue and seize the
woman.”
“Her feet had wings, august young mistress. With the honorable young
lord upon her back she fairly flew by the gates, as if possessed of
infernal power.”
“And thou art very old!” said the Lady Saito, gently. “Thy ancient limbs
are unable to compete with the fleet wings of a mother’s love!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXIV
AT the evening meal, which was served upon an open balcony because of
the intense heat, Ohano kept her eyes assiduously upon her food. The
mood of her mother-in-law had changed. There was nothing gentle in her
expression now as she savagely stabbed at the live fish upon her plate,
speared it in just the proper place, and then lifted a morsel of the
still palpitating flesh upon her chop-stick.
“This is excellent fish, Ohano,” she said, pleasantly. “Come, taste a
morsel while the live flavor is still upon it. Possibly it will remind
you of the brevity of life. Now we are here, possessed of tempestuous
passions and emotions—for even a fish, so it is said, has the soul of a
murderer. Then just think, one sharp pick of the knife—or sword—and,
like the honorable fish, we are—gone! The devils of hatred, envy,
desire, and malice can no longer torture us!”
Ohano said nothing. She gave one swift glance at the fish, then turned
away, nauseated.
Lady Saito grunted and fell to eating her meal as if hungry. Presently,
filled and refreshed, she began again:
“Of course it must be very plain to you, Ohano, that it will be
impossible for the Saitos to regain possession of my son’s child unless
we take into our household the mother also.”
Ohano sat up with a start, and as her mother-in-law continued, the
expression of intense fear on her face deepened.
“I know of no law in Japan—and I have been advised in the matter—by
which we can forcibly take a child from its mother, in the absence of
its father.”
Ohano did not move. She moistened her dry lips, and her eyes moved
furtively. She watched her mother-in-law’s face with a mute expression,
half of terror and half of defiance. In the going of the hated child of
the Spider, Ohano had not found the relief she had expected. Nay, there
loomed before her now the possibility of a greater menace to her peace
of mind. She felt the weight of the older woman’s tyrannical will as
never before. She stammered:
“Pardon my dullness. I do not understand your words.”
“It is better,” counseled the other, sternly, “that you not alone
understand my words, but that you study them well! Think awhile, Ohano!”
For a time there was silence between them; then Lady Saito continued:
“It is my wish, it is the wish of the ancestors, that the honorable
descendant of the Saitos be housed here in the home of his fathers. If
it is impossible to have my son’s son without the legal custodian of his
body, then we must face the matter gracefully, and solicit her, humbly
if need be, to come also!”
“That—would be—impossible!” gasped Ohano.
“Nay,” protested her mother, coldly, “it is done every day in Japan. The
honorable Moonlight will not be the first divorced wife who has been
again received in the home of the parents-in-law. You forget that until
recently there was even a custom among many families where the wife
failed in her duty to supply children to her husband, for an honorable
concubine to be chosen in her place duly to serve her lord.”
Ohano tried to smile, but it was a ghastly effort.
“That is an ancient custom. It is no longer tolerated in Japan. It would
be a matter of notorious gossip. We could not, with honor, she and I,
live under the same roof together.”
“That is true,” admitted Lady Saito, calmly, and now she met Ohano’s
eyes firmly.
“I refuse to be ‘returned,’” cried Ohano, shrilly. “My honorable
relatives will not permit you to divorce me for such a cause. It is not
possible to treat me in the manner accorded a geisha!”
“That, too, is true,” quietly assented her mother-in-law. “We, the
Saitos, desire to remain on terms of friendship with your most honorable
family. Now, therefore, we look to you, Ohano, for a solution of the
problem. You are right. These are not the times when honorable men
maintain concubines under the same roofs as their wives. We wish to
impress the Western people with our morality! Ha!” she broke off, to
laugh bitterly. “We follow the code set by them. Yet what are we to do
when confronted by such a condition as exists in our household now? When
a wife is childless, it is surely an excellent rule which allows a
humble one to bear the offspring and put them into the arms of the
exalted but childless wife. But we can do this no longer. Our war with
Russia—our victories, which are proclaimed daily—will make these matters
all the more a sensitive point with the nation. We must live according
to the code set down by the Westerners, as I have said. They have taught
us to fight! Our people desire to imitate their virtues!” She laughed in
hoarse derision. Then she continued:
“We bow, then, to this. It cannot be helped. Now, as we cannot take the
honorable Lord Taro by force from his mother, and we cannot permit two
wives of my son to remain under the one roof, we must seek some other
solution of our problem. Can you not offer some suggestion?”
“It is possible,” said Ohano, “that the Lord Saito Gonji may not give up
his life for Tenshi-sama. Many soldiers return. In that event—” She
stammered piteously. “I am young and very healthy. I will bear him
children yet!”
“We cannot count upon so unlikely a contingency, my girl. We Japanese
women, when we sacrifice our men to the Emperor’s service, _pray_ that
they may not return! It is a pious, patriotic prayer, Ohano. Be worthy
of it, my girl. Duty and honor to the ancestors are the watchwords of
our language.”
“Duty—and honor!” repeated Ohano, slowly.
A long silence fell between them, during which Ohano’s eyes never left
the face of her mother-in-law. A sick terror assailed her, so that she
could not move, but sat there rigidly, nursing her lame arm. What
dreadful project, she asked herself, did the stern mother-in-law now
meditate, that she should look at the unhappy Ohano with such a
peculiar, commanding expression?
Finally the older woman said, with quiet force:
“Ohano, you come of illustrious stock. There have been women of your
race who have found a solution to problems more tragic than yours. I
pray you reflect upon the text of the samourai, which, as you know, was
as binding upon the women as the men: ‘To die with honor, when one can
no longer live with honor!’”
She stood up, and leaned heavily upon her staff.
“Let me recommend,” she added, softly, “that you study and emulate—and
_emulate_”—she repeated the last word with deadly emphasis—“the lives of
your ancestors!”
Ohano’s mouth had dropped wide open. She came to her feet mechanically,
and mechanically she backed from her mother-in-law until she came to the
farthest screen; and against this she leaned like one about to faint.
Her mother-in-law’s voice seemed to reach her as from very far away, and
also it seemed to Ohano that a smile, jeering and cruel, was on the aged
woman’s face, marking it like a livid scar. It was as if she cried to
Ohano:
“I challenge you, as the daughter of a samourai, to do your duty!”
Ohano gasped out something, she knew not what.
“Ho!” cried Lady Saito, fiercely, “it does not matter to the true
daughter of a samourai whether the days of suppuku are passed or not. We
take refuge too much behind the new rules of life. The spark of heroes
is imperishable. If you are a worthy daughter of your ancestors it is
still within your insignificant body!”
Said Ohano, with chattering teeth:
“I—I—will—go—to the go-down (treasure-house), honorable mother-in-law,
and study the swords of my ancestors. I pray you ask the gods to give me
strength!”
When she was gone, the Lady Saito Ichigo summoned a maid. To her she
said curtly:
“You will bid the Samourai Asado”—it was the first time in years she had
referred to this old retainer as “samourai”—“unlock the doors of the
honorable go-down. The Lady Saito Gonji would examine the
treasure-chests of her ancestors!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXV
IN the go-down itself, Ohano’s courage deserted her completely. As the
stone doors of the go-down were pushed aside, and she stepped into the
darkened chamber with its odor almost as of dead things, a sense of
unconquerable repugnance and terror assailed her.
From every side, gleaming, softly smiling almost, in the light of the
setting sun, the ancient relics of bygone days were heaped. Almost it
seemed as if these beautiful objects were living things, their burnished
and lacquered bodies afire in the darkened chamber.
Slowly, fearfully, staggering as she walked, Ohano made her way between
rows of this piled-up treasure, the wealth and pride of the house of
Saito.
Now she had come to where the possessions of her own honorable family
were set. Trembling in every limb, hovering and hesitating above it, she
at length unlocked and opened an ancient chest. Fearfully she looked
down into its depths, then felt below the heavy layers of silk.
Presently, with her poor, lame hand, Ohano brought up a single sword.
It was very long. The hilt was of lacquer, a shining black. The ferrule,
guard, cleats, and rivets were inlaid and embossed with rare metals. The
beautiful blade, as brittle as an icicle, seemed to shine in the
darkened chamber with its noble classic beauty, and it awoke in the
breast of the agitated Ohano a new sensation—one of awe, of reverence
and pride!
She held it in the light that came through the still open door, and for
long she looked at it with widened, fascinated eyes.
It seemed to her that some chanted song of proud and noble achievements
rang in her ears, as if the whispering ghosts of her ancestors were
urging her on.
“Courage!” they cried to her. “The gods love thee now!”
She pricked her wrist to test her strength. Then she screamed harshly,
like one who has lost his senses. The sword dropped with a clank upon
the stone floor. Ohano fled from the go-down like one possessed.
With the blood streaming from her hands and marking her progress with
its ruddy drops, she sped across the gardens and into the house. No one
stopped her; no one even called to her. All had been sent away by orders
of the Lady Saito Ichigo.
Alone again in her chamber, with her breath coming in agitated gasps,
her wrist burning with an unbearable pain, weak from the loss of blood,
she swayed by the shoji, her dry lips reiterating the common prayer of
the devout Buddhist: “Namu, amida, Butsu!” (Save us, eternal Buddha!)
Suddenly she felt something cool placed within her hands, and her
fingers were pressed gently but forcibly about the object. It was the
sword she had left behind. A superstitious fear assailed her that the
gods had perceived her weakness and inexorably had placed the sword
within her hands, demanding of Ohano that she do her duty.
Within the girl’s breast a new emotion arose—the ambition to prove to
all the ancestors that within her weak and insignificant body yet glowed
the spark of heroism; that she was, after all, a true daughter of the
samourai.
Her hands acquired a miraculous steadiness and strength. She set the
sword firmly before her, point up. Grasping it with both hands about the
middle, she dumbly, and with a certain dignity and even grace, rested
her body upon it. Slowly she sank down the full length of the blade.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXVI
MEANWHILE, within the war-torn heart of Manchuria, the last words of
Ohano came up to torment the soldier. His days and nights were made
horrible by the imagined reiteration in his ears of the words of Ohano.
By the light of a hundred camp-fires he saw the face of Moonlight, the
wife he had discarded at the command of the ancestors. He tried to
picture it as he had first seen her, with that peculiar radiance about
her beauty. She had appeared to him then like to some rare and precious
flower, so fragile and exquisite it seemed almost profanation to touch
her. How he had desired her! How he had adored her!
He recalled, with anguish, the first days of their marriage—a mixture of
exquisite joy and pain; then the harrowing, heartbreaking months that
had followed—the metamorphosis that had taken place in his beautiful
wife. How timid, meek, submissive, they had made her in those latter
days! He paced and repaced the ground, suffering torments incomparably
worse than those of the wounded soldiers.
To think of Moonlight as an inmate of the Yoshiwara, as Ohano had
insisted, the last resource of the most abandoned of lost souls, was to
arouse him to an inner frenzy that no amount of action in the bloodiest
encounters could even temporarily efface.
He began to count the days which must pass before his release. He knew
by now that the war was soon to end. Already negotiations were under
way. At first he had bitterly regretted the fact that the gods had not
mercifully permitted him to give up his life; now he realized that
perchance they had saved it for another purpose—the purpose of finding
his lost wife. He would devote the rest of his life, he promised
himself, to this undertaking; and, ah! when once again they two should
meet, nothing should part them.
They would go away to a new land—a better land even than Japan—of which
he had heard so much from a friend he had made out here in Manchuria.
There men did not cast off their wives because they were childless.
There no cruel laws sacrificed an innocent wife at the demand of the
dead. There there were no licensed dens of inquity into which the
innocent might be sold into a bondage lower than hell itself!
Gonji dreamed unceasingly of this land of promise, whither he intended
to go when once he had found his beloved Moonlight.
Incognito, finally, the Lord Gonji returned to Japan. He did not, as
became a dutiful and honorable son, proceed straightway to his home,
there to permit the members of his family to celebrate and rejoice over
his return.
At last Lord Gonji felt free of the thrall of the ancestors. He was a
son of the New Japan, master of his own conscience and deeds. The old
strict code set down for men of his class and race he knew was medieval,
childish, unworthy of consideration. Hitherto his actions had been
governed by the example of the ancestors and by order of those in
authority over him. Now he was free—free to choose his own path; and his
path led not to the house of his fathers.
It led, instead, to that “hell city” which had been imprinted so vividly
upon his mind that even in the heart of Manchuria he had seen its lights
and heard its brazen music.
From street to street of the Yoshiwara, and from house to house, now
went the Lord Saito Gonji, scanning with eager, feverish eyes every
pitiful little inmate thus publicly exhibited in cages. But among the
hopeless, apathetic faces that smiled at him with enforced beguilement
was not the one he sought.
He turned to other cities, wherever the famous brothels were maintained,
leaving for the last his home city of Kioto, where once the Spider had
been the darling of the House of Slender Pines.
How his haughty relatives had despised her calling; yet how desirable,
how infinitely superior it was in every way to the one to which they had
perhaps driven her.
The geisha was protected under the law, and her virtue was in her own
hands. She could be as pure or as light as she chose. Not even the
harshest of masters could actually drive her to the degradation of the
inmates of the Yoshiwara, who were sold into bondage often in their
babyhood.
If he could but believe that Moonlight was now in the House of Slender
Pines! Yet his agents had insisted she had not returned to her former
home: moreover, they had supported the contention of Ohano, that
undoubtedly it was into some such resort that the unhappy outcast had
finally been driven.
Upon a day when the inmates of the Yoshiwara of Kioto were upon their
annual parade, when the city was swept by a paroxysm of patriotic
enthusiasm over the return of the victorious troops, Saito Gonji, worn
and wearied from his vain quest through many cities, returned at last to
his home city.
The streets were in holiday dress. From every roof-tree and tower the
sun-flag tossed its ruddy symbol in the air. The people ran through the
streets as if possessed, now cheering the passing soldiers, now waving
and shouting to the happy paraders, and all following, some taunting,
some cheering the long line of courtezans of the Yoshiwara.
They marched in single file, their long, silken robes, heavily
embroidered, held up by their maids, and accompanied by their
diminutive, toddling apprentices, often little girls as young as six and
seven.
Yet, small as they were, each was a miniature reproduction and
understudy of her mistress, in her elaborate coiffure with its
glittering ornaments (the geisha wears flowers), her obi tied in front,
and the thick paste of paint laid lividly from brow to chin. Some day it
would be their lot to step into the place of the ones they emulated,
and, in turn, slaves would hold their trains and masters would exhibit
them like animals in public cages.
Gonji followed the long train of courtezans for miles. Sometimes he
would run ahead, and, walking backward, pass down the long line,
scanning every face piercingly and letting not one escape his scrutiny.
And, as he studied the faces of these “hell women,” as his countrymen
had named them, for the first time Gonji forgot his beloved Moonlight.
The words of the American officer he had met in the campaign in
Manchuria came up vividly to his mind:
“No nation,” the American had said, “can honorably hold its head erect
among civilized nations, no matter what its prowess and power, so long
as its women are held in such bondage; so long as its women are bartered
and sold, often by their own fathers, husbands, and brothers, like
cattle.”
A great and illuminating light broke upon the tempest-tossed soul of the
Lord Saito Gonji. He would erect an imperishable monument to the memory
of his lost wife. She should be the inspiration for the most knightly
act that had ever been performed in the history of his nation.
It should be his task to effect the abolishment of the Yoshiwara! He
would devote his life to this one great cause, and never would he
abandon it until he had succeeded. This, and the revision of the inhuman
and barbarous laws governing divorce, should be his life-work.
He would show the ancestors that there were deeds even more worthy and
heroic than those of the sword.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXVII
IF Ohano’s relatives were aware of the manner of her death, they gave no
sign. Such of the male members of the family and of her husband’s as
were not serving in the war stolidly attended the funeral of their
kinswoman, and shortly Ohano was honorably interred in the mortuary
halls of the Saito ancestors.
There had been expressions of sorrow over her passing, but these were
largely perfunctory. Ohano had been an orphan; and, as she had lived all
of her life in the Saito house, her husband’s people had really been
nearer to her than her own family. Her uncle, Takedo Isami, was possibly
the only one of her relatives who had known the girl with any degree of
intimacy, and at this time he too had entered the war service.
Many offerings and prayers were put up for Ohano, and in the end the
relatives quietly dispersed to their homes, leaving the silent and prim
old Lady Saito alone in the now almost deserted mansion. She shut
herself into the chamber of the dead girl, and for several days not even
her personal maid was permitted to intrude upon her voluntary
retirement. Whatever were the thoughts that tormented and haunted the
mother-in-law of Ohano, she emerged, in the end, still resolute and
stern, though her hair had turned as white as snow.
From day to day now the aged lady crouched over the kotatsu, warming her
withered old fingers, lighting and relighting her pipe, and always
seeming to listen, to watch for some one she expected to return.
Couriers and agents had been despatched by her orders to the city in
search of Moonlight and her child. There was nothing left for the
Dowager Saito to do, save to wait. Not for a moment had she considered
the possibility that her servants might be unable to find the one they
sought, or, having found her, fail to induce the geisha to return to the
house of the Saitos. To keep her mind from brooding over Ohano, she
endeavored to force it to remain fixed upon one matter only—the recovery
of her son’s child.
But the days passed away, the chill season of hoar frost swept the trees
bare of leaf and color, and the silently moving servants set the winter
amado (wooden sliding walls) in place; and still, with a stony, frozen
look upon her face, the Lady Saito waited.
Gradually the proud and strong spirit within her began to weaken under
the strain. Supported by a maid on either side, she toiled up the
mountain slope to visit the temple endowed by her family, and to seek
advice and comfort there. In broken words, her voice stammering and
shaking, she whispered a confession to the chief priest, and entreated
him to help her with spiritual advice and prayers.
Though the lives of the priests are devoted largely to meditation and
the study of the sacred books, they are by no means ignorant of what
passes about them. The chief priest of the Saito temple knew every
detail of the casting out of the first wife; he knew, moreover, what had
been the end of Ohano. As the family had not, up to the present,
however, sought his advice in the matter, he had expressed no opinion.
An acolyte had quite recently come to the chief priest with a strange
story. It concerned a very beautiful geisha who seemed in deep distress,
who, with her maiden clinging to her skirt and a baby upon her back, had
asked the boy to direct them toward a certain small temple where an
ancient priestess of the Nichi sect had lived. The acolyte had been
unable to direct the geisha; and, to his surprise and distress, the two
had climbed higher up the mountain slope, with the evident intention of
penetrating farther into the interior. Both the priest and the acolyte
had waited anxiously for the return of the wanderers, for they knew
there were no sheltering places in the direction the pair had taken, and
the weather had turned very cold. It was not the season for an infant to
be abroad. Now the chief priest called the acolyte before him and
requested the boy to repeat his story to the Lady Saito Ichigo.
She listened with mixed feelings; and when the boy was through he
chanced, timidly, to raise his eyes to the face of the exalted patroness
of the temple, and, as he afterward informed the priest, he saw that
great tears ran down the stern and furrowed cheeks of the lady, nor
could she speak for the sobs that tore her.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE trees had dropped their leaves, and, with naked arms extended,
seemed to speak voicelessly of the winter almost come. Only the
evergreen pines kept their warm coats of green, and under their shade
the travelers found a temporary refuge from the wind and the cold,
piercing rain.
Moonlight had been very sure that they had climbed the hill in which was
hidden the retreat of the nun who had previously harbored her, and where
she knew she could find a refuge to which not even the agents of the
Saito might penetrate. But Kioto is surrounded by hills on all sides,
and the geisha had lost her way.
With the little Omi to run before her and sell to the chance passer-by
or pilgrim, for a sen or two, the jewels of the crazed wife of Matsuda,
or to beg rice and fish from charitably disposed temples, they had
subsisted thus far.
At first she had turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of her maiden, that
they go to the city below rather than to the bleak, deserted, autumn
hills. But now, as the penetrating rain searched down through even the
wide-spreading branches of the pine-trees, her heart ached heavily.
Omi, shivering against her mistress’s side, began to cry, and
recommenced her prayers to return to the city below. The troops were
returning, and even here on the quiet hillside the sound of the beating
drum, the wild and hoarse singing, and cheering of the soldiers and the
citizens was heard.
“Why perish in the cold hills?” asked the little apprentice-geisha,
“when the warm, happy city calls to us? Oh, let us go! Let us go!”
Feeling the cold hands of her baby, the geisha shivered; yet as she
looked off hungrily to where the little maiden pointed she felt a sense
of strong reluctance almost akin to terror. It was down there they were
looking for her, she knew. There they would take from her the honorable
child of her beloved lord.
“How much colder it is getting,” reproached Omi, crossly; “and see,
graciousness, your kimono is not even padded.”
“Undo my obi, Omi. Wrap it about yourself and his lordship. It is seven
yards long, and will protect you both amply.”
“But you, sweet mistress? I will not take your obi. Your hands are cold.
The august clogs are broken even!”
She knelt to tie the thong firmer, and while still kneeling Omi
continued her beseeching.
“Now, if we start downward, we shall travel much quicker. I will bear
his lordship on my back. We can reach the city in less than a night and
a day. I know a little garden just on the outskirts of Kioto. There we
can spend the night. With warm rice and sake and—”
“Hush, Omi, it is impossible.”
Omi threw back her head and began to wail aloud, just as a child would
have done. The burden of her cry was that she was cold, very cold, and
she was very sure that they would all perish in the wet and horrible
mountains. The geisha tried vainly to quiet her. At last she said:
“Omi, if you love me, be patient for yet another day. If to-morrow we do
not find the shrine of the honorable nun, then—then—” her voice broke,
and she turned her face away. Omi caught at her hand and clung to her
joyously.
“Oh, you have promised!” Then, as she saw the distress of her mistress,
she cried out remorsefully that she was prepared to follow her wherever
she desired to go—yes, even if it should prove to be the highest point
of the mountains, said the little maid. After a moment, as the geisha
made no response, Omi, already regretting her generous outburst, sighed
heavily and declared it was very hard. She sat back on her heels, upon
the damp ground, and looked off plaintively toward the city below. How
she longed for the bright lights of the geisha-house, the chatter and
the movement, the dance and the song, the warm quilt under which was
hidden the glowing kotatsu, close to which, Omi knew, the geishas would
creep at night for comfort. As she felt the drizzling rain and wind and
saw nothing but the dark trees about her, her little head drooped upon
her breast, and she began to sob drearily again.
Suddenly the Spider bent above the child and patted her softly upon the
head.
“Play a little tune upon your samisen, my Omi, and I will sing to you a
little song I myself have composed to the honorable baby-san.”
Instantly Omi’s face cleared. Crouched upon her heels, looking up
adoringly at her mistress, she picked upon her instrument, and while the
cold rain dripped down upon them the Spider sang:
Neneko, neneko, ya!
Sleep, my little one, sleep,
As the bottomless pit of the ocean,
So is my love so deep!
Neneko, neneko, ya!
Sleep, my little one, sleep!
As the unexplored vasts of Nirvana,
So is my love so deep!
As the softly crooning voice of the dancer stole out upon the air a
little cortège which had found its way up the intricate mountain-path
halted there in the woods. In silence the runners dropped the shafts of
the vehicles. Supported by her maids, the Lady Saito alighted, and
tottered painfully up the hill-slope. She stood very still when she saw
that little group under the tree, and began to tremble in every limb.
The little Omi saw her first, and with a cry of fear threw her arms
protectingly about her mistress, thrusting her thin little body before
her, as if to shield the beloved one from harm. Now Moonlight saw her,
and for a moment she remained unmoving, staring at the old figure
standing there unprotected in the drizzling rain, with arms half
extended, the withered old face full of an appeal she had not yet found
the courage to utter.
As she looked at the once dreaded lady, Moonlight was conscious of a
sense of great calmness and strength. No longer was her being flooded
with the wild impulses of resentment and hatred toward her
mother-in-law. She knew not why it was so, but her heart felt barren of
all feeling save one of overwhelming pity.
Her voice was as calm and gentle as though she had always been a lady of
high caste, who had never known a turbulent emotion.
“Thou art unprotected from the rain. I pray you take my place, honorable
Lady Saito!”
Now she was at the side of the other, leading her, waiting upon her.
Under the sheltering arms of the great pine-trees, so near to each other
that their shoulders touched, these two, who had once hated each other
so deeply, looked at one another with white faces.
Said the Lady Saito Ichigo, with quivering lips:
“I have made a long journey!”
Said Moonlight, calmly:
“You come to seek your son’s son?”
“Nay,” said the aged woman, and she put out a trembling hand and caught
beseechingly at the arm of the geisha. “I have come for thee, too, my
daughter!”
A silence, unbroken save by the sobs of the little Omi, fell now between
them. Then said the geisha, very gently:
“Speak your—will—all-highest one. I—I will try to—to serve the honorable
ancestors of the Saito, even though it be necessary to make the supreme
sacrifice.”
Her hands fumbled with the strings that bound the child in its bag upon
her back. Now she had swung it round in front. The child’s little face,
rosy in sleep, rolled back upon her arm. She felt the hungry arms of the
woman beside her reaching out irresistibly toward the child; and, though
she tried to smile, a sob tore from her lips as she lifted her baby and
put it solemnly into the arms of its grandmother. Then she turned her
back quickly, and Omi sprang up and received her into her arms.
Suddenly she felt the shaking fingers of the aged woman upon her
shoulder. She said, with her face still hidden and her voice muffled by
sobs:
“I pray you go, hastily, lest my love prove greater than my strength.”
“The journey is long,” said Lady Saito. “Let us set out at once, my
daughter. I go not back without thee.”
Slowly Moonlight put the sheltering arms of Omi from her and turned and
looked wistfully, almost hungrily, at her mother-in-law.
“It is—unnecessary,” she said, gently. “I pray you forgive the
dissension I have already caused in your honorable family. Say to Ohano,
from me, that though it is not possible for me to give to her the one
who has given to me his eternal vows, yet gladly I resign to her my
little son.”
A curious look was on the face of the mother-in-law. For a long moment
she stood staring up blankly at the geisha. Then she said, in a tone of
deadly quiet:
“My daughter Ohano has gone upon—a journey!”
“A journey!” repeated the geisha, lowly. Then, as she saw that look upon
the other’s face: “Ah, you mean not surely the Long Journey to the
Meido?” she cried out, piteously. Lady Saito’s head dropped upon her
breast. Moonlight felt overwhelmed, dazed, awed. Ohano gone! Ohano, the
strong, the triumphant one!
“I entreat you to come with me now,” said Lady Saito, simply. “It was
the wish of Ohano that you—that you should take her place.” She paused,
and added quietly: “It was she, my daughter, who made a place for you in
the house of the ancestors.”
They had lifted her into the carriage. Her head fell back, and she began
to weep slow, painful tears that crept down her face and dropped upon
the hands of her maiden. Said the latter, joyously:
“See how the gods love you, sweet mistress. See how they have avenged
you. See how they destroy your enemies and—”
“Do not speak so,” cried her mistress entreatingly. “Only the gods
themselves are competent to judge us. I do not weep for myself, but for
Ohano, who has been ruthlessly thrust out upon the Long Journey. I would
that I could take her place; but all that I can do to help her is to go
to the shrines daily and beseech the gods to make easy the travels of
Ohano.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXIX
IT was the season of greatest cold. The she hills of Kioto were
enwrapped in a garment of snow, and with the glistening sun upon them
they looked as beautiful as a dream. The pines and hemlocks seemed to
spread out their dark-green arms, as if to support the glorified burden.
The gateman of the Saito shiro, squatting upon his heels, with his face
buried in the great, absorbing book of the West, chanced to look up over
his bone-rimmed glasses, and saw a lone traveler coming on foot along
the path which led to the lodge gates. Kiyo hobbled down to the gates
just as the visitor reached them. In a high, thin voice the ancient
gateman challenged the traveler. Then, as the latter did not respond to
his call, but peered up at him curiously and suddenly, the old retainer
began to tremble so violently that his shaking hands could hardly unbar
the gates.
As the young man entered, Kiyo dropped upon his knees, and bumped his
bald head repeatedly upon the frozen ground, emitting strange little
cries of excitement and joy over the return of the long-absent one.
Deeply touched, Gonji, who had always loved old Kiyo, bent over the
gateman, patting his head, and finally even assisting him to his feet.
He inquired solicitously after the health of Kiyo and his kindred, and
then asked how his own family now were. Kiyo had answered joyously and
willingly all the inquiries of his master touching upon his own
kinsfolk, but at the questions regarding the family he served he became
suddenly constrained and wretched. His silence apparently but aroused
the further curiosity and anxiety of Gonji. He persisted, his voice
becoming almost peremptory in tone.
“I condescended to ask you regarding the health of my family. You do not
answer me, good Kiyo-sama! Is there sickness, then, within the shiro?”
“Iya, iya! (No, no!)” hastily protested Kiyo. “All is well. It is good
health within the shiro, praise be to the gods!”
Still his questioner noted something strange about the manner in which
the gateman avoided his glance. He studied old Kiyo curiously, as though
from his own sad reveries, in which he had been absorbed to the
exclusion of all else, he had been reluctantly aroused at the thought of
possible danger to his people. Gonji had hardened his heart, as he
thought, against the ones who were responsible for his unhappiness—nay,
who had deliberately cast forth a pure and beautiful soul. Nevertheless,
he experienced a sense of uneasiness at the thought that all had not
been well with them.
“Come,” he urged. “Do not hesitate to confide in your master, good
Kiyo-sama. Tell me the news, be it good or bad.”
“All is well. All is well,” almost sobbingly chanted the gateman. “I
pray you enter the shiro. There you will see for yourself.”
Gonji turned a bit uneasily toward the house, then halted abruptly.
“I read in your face,” he said, “a tale of some calamity to my family.
Already I know of my father’s glorious sacrifice for Tenshi-sama”—bowing
as he spoke the Mikado’s name—“for I was with my father at the end. So
if it is that—but no, there is something else troubling you, Kiyo. I
know you too well not to read your face. Is it my mother?”
His voice broke slightly, and for the first time in years he was
conscious of a sense of tenderness toward his mother. She had been the
main source of all his misery; but she loved him. This Gonji knew,
despite all.
Again Kiyo hastened to reassure him, this time eagerly and proudly.
“Iya, master. Thy mother is in excellent health. Happy, moreover, as
never before, with the honorable Lord Taro, thy son, embraced within her
arms!”
The young man was staring at him now strangely. He seemed unable to
speak or move. A look as of almost troubled awakening was in the face of
Gonji. It was as if a thought, long thrust aside, had suddenly recurred
to him. During all these agonizing months, when he had wandered about
from city to city, he had been possessed with but one idea—the finding
of his wife. Now, suddenly, the gateman’s words came to him as a very
revelation. Strange that he had not even thought upon this matter since
he had left Japan. He was a father!
“It is—possible!” he gasped. “I have a—”
“Son! Gloriously a son, master!” cried Kiyo, grinning joyously.
The young man continued to stare almost incredulously at the gateman,
but in his face was no reflection of the joy visible in that of the
faithful retainer. He was overwhelmed with the sense of a new emotion
whose very sweetness tore at his heart, and brought unbidden tears to
his eyes.
Suddenly, against his will even, there came vividly before his mind’s
eye a vision of Ohano as he had seen her last, crawling upon her knees
toward him and beating her hands futilely together, as she besought him
piteously to permit her to attend him through the dark paths that led to
the Lotus Land.
How the gods had comforted the unloved wife, was his thought, and with
it came a sense of overwhelming grief and bitterness that they had not
shown a similar charity toward the beloved Moonlight. He pictured Ohano,
cherished, protected, praised, within the honorable house of Saito, with
the long-desired heir of all the illustrious ancestors upon her bosom.
Then his mind reverted to the wandering outcast, Moonlight, and a lump
rose stranglingly in his throat. As he made his way blindly toward the
house, all the pride and joy of fatherhood, which had uplifted him as on
a flood but a moment since, seemed to drop from him no less suddenly,
leaving him as before, hopeless, uncomforted, and utterly forlorn.
Within the shiro, the Lady Saito Ichigo sat drowsily swaying by the
hibachi, ceaselessly smoking, and muttering incoherent prayers for the
soul of her lord and for Ohano’s. She was very feeble, helpless, and
childish now. Her body had lost much of its vigor, and the sternness
which had once made her so formidable seemed to have entirely left her.
Moonlight’s dark eyes rested upon her with an expression of both pity
and anxiety. Suddenly she pushed the little Taro along the smoothly
matted floor and whispered coaxing words into the child’s ear. He
crawled along several paces till he came behind his grandmother. By
grasping her obi at the back he was enabled to pull himself to his feet.
Now his chubby, warm little face nestled up against Lady Saito’s neck.
The pipe dropped from her mouth and fell unheeded upon the hearth. She
turned hungrily toward the child and drew him passionately to her
breast.
Outside the screens Gonji had paused, unable either to enter or to
retire. He had resolved, at whatever cost, to resume his forlorn
wanderings in search of the lost one, ere finally he should take up the
abolition of the Yoshiwara—a task which had seemed to be assigned to him
by the very gods themselves. But before going he felt it to be his duty
to have a last interview with his mother, and with Ohano, the mother of
his child!
Nevertheless he paused outside the screens, feeling unable to combat the
sense of reluctance and repugnance to joining that little family he knew
was within. How long he remained outside the shoji he could not have
told. He debated the advisability of withdrawing without their knowledge
of his presence. Kiyo would keep the secret. So would Ochika, whose loud
outcry at his advent he had quickly silenced. Gonji felt sure his brief
visit might bring merely unrest and unhappiness. It would be kinder both
to Ohano and to his mother to go. As his resolve became fixed, he was
swept with an anguished longing and desire at least to see, but once,
the face of the son the gods had graciously given him.
With infinite caution, lest the sound might be heard by those within, he
began to scratch with his nail upon the fusuma, till gradually he had
made a small aperture, and to this he applied his eye.
He remained motionless at the shoji. He saw, within, the toddling child,
as it made its swift way across the room toward its grandmother; he
heard the sob of his mother as she took the child into her embrace; then
he saw the face of Moonlight lifted alertly and turned toward where her
husband’s face was pressed against the screen. She alone had heard, and,
intuitively, had guessed the truth. She came slowly to her feet, her
lips apart, her wide eyes dark and beautiful with emotion and
excitement.
Suddenly the man outside the screens became animated with the strength
almost of a madman. He tore violently at the sliding wall, crushing it
into its groove. Now he was upon the threshold of the room.
His mother screamed, hoarsely, wildly. But his glance went over her head
and by the little wondering child, who had crawled toward him. Gonji saw
nothing in the world save the face of that one who had rushed to meet
him.
It was much later that they told him of Ohano. At first the girl’s
sacrifice, for his sake and that of the ancestors, brought from him only
an exclamation of pity; he seemed unable to appreciate the facts of the
matter. There was no room for a shadow upon his happiness now. They were
sitting in the sunlight, that came in a golden stream through the
latticed shoji, piercing its way even through the amado. They said
little to each other, but upon their faces was a radiance as golden as
the sunlight.
Suddenly a tiny shape flickered across the outer wall. It seemed but a
moving speck at first upon the water-colored paper; but so insistently
did it beat against the wall that the family perceived it was an insect
of some kind.
Gonji arose and looked at it curiously, where it fluttered against the
outside of the paper wall.
“Why, it is a cicada—and at this time of year!” he said.
Lady Saito laid her pipe upon the hibachi and hobbled across to her
son’s side, and Moonlight and the little Taro pressed against him on the
other. They all watched the moving little shape outside with absorbed
interest and wonder.
“I dreamed of a cicada last night,” said Lady Saito, uneasily. “It kept
flying at my ears, whispering that it could not rest. It is a bad sign.
Open the shoji, my son. We can catch it with the sleeve.”
He pushed the screen partly open, and the cicada crept along the
lacquered latticed wall, beating its little wings and sliding up and
down.
Lady Saito slapped at it with the end of her long sleeve, but it fled to
the top of the wall. She beat at it with a bamboo broom, and presently
it fluttered down and fell upon the floor.
They all hung over the curious little creature, and as they examined it
an oppressive feeling of sadness crept upon them.
“How strange is this little cicada,” murmured Moonlight, troubled. “See,
one of its little wings is much smaller than the other.”
“It is a bad sign,” repeated the mother, gloomily; and she made as if to
step upon the little creature, when Moonlight grasped at her arm and
drew her back.
“Do not kill it! Do not kill it!” she cried, in sudden excitement. “Oh,
do you not see—it is Ohano, poor Ohano! She has returned to us in this
way. There is a message she wishes to bring us.”
Even as she spoke the cicada ceased its fluttering and lay very still. A
silence fell upon the Saito family. They were oppressed with the sense
of being in the presence of one dead.
Said the Lord Saito Gonji, in a very gentle voice:
“What can it be my wife wishes? I would gladly resign my happiness if I
could but make easier the lot of Ohano.”
“She was always anxious about her next birth,” whispered his mother.
“Perhaps she desires a Buddhist service especially for her spirit!”
Moonlight had tenderly lifted the little body and put it into a small
box.
“Come,” she said, simply. “We must set out at once for the temple. The
good priest will perform the Segati service, and we will bury Ohano’s
little body in the grounds of the temple. There surely it will rest in
peace!”
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Honorable Miss Moonlight" ***
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