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.
2
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
3
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
4
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
5
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 con-
6tact
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.”
7
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.
8
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,
9
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 recog-
10nized
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.
11
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
12
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
14
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.”
15
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
16
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.
17
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.
18
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
19
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.
20
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!
21
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
22 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. Thou23
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
24
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
25
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—”
26
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
27
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
28
“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—”
29
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.
30
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.
31
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.”
32
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,33
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
34
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!’35 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.36
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!”
37
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
38
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
39
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
41
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
42
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
43
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
44
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.”
45
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, what-
46ever
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
47
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
48
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 con-
49template
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,
50
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 shat-
51ter
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.
52
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
53
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,From
54
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
55
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:
56
“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.
57
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.
58
“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.
59
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.”
60
“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
61
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:
62
“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.
63
“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,
64
“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 the65
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!”
66
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 oppor-
67tunity
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,
68
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
69
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.
70
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, more-
71over,
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 not72
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,”73
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
74
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
75
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.
76
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
77
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
78
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,
79
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
80
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.
81
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.
82
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
83
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,
“though84
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
85
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.
86
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
87
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
88
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!
89
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.
90
“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
91
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.
92
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 re-
93spect
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
94
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
95
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
96
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.
97
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
98
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
99
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
100
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
101
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
102
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.
103
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
104
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.
105
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 in-
106sistently.
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!”
107
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
108
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
109
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
111
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:
112
“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!”
113
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:
114
“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.115
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.116
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:
117
“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!
118
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.
119
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.
120
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:
121
“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
122
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
123
purpose. The
geishasscattered, 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.
124
“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 cases125
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.
126
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
127
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 re-
128spectable
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.
129
“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.”
130
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
131
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.
132
“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.”
133
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!”
134
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
135
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.
136
“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
137
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!”
138
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
139
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:
140
“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-
141in-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 Lord142
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,
“that143
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!”
144
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!”
145
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.
146
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
147
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.
148
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.
149
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
150
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.
151
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.
152
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.”
153
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.
154
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
155
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
156
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
157
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.
158
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
159
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.
160
“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
geisha161-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,
162
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
163
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
164
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
165
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.”
166
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
167
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 delib-
168erately
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!”
169
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 over-
170whelming
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
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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
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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
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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
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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!”
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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
