The castle at Ozaka now stood in the main finished, and with Yodogima's
occupancy and the kwambaku's favor at once sprang into prominence; not
only as a strategic point of first importance, but as the very seat of
empire socially, possibly politically, rivaling in all respects, if not
eclipsing, Kyoto, the capital and ruling post since the days of Kwammu,
some eight hundred years before.
This tendency on the part of the barons, to centralize all things at the
new seat of power, did not meet with Hideyoshi's broader views; he was
democratic at heart, and beside a better judgment may have preferred
"toadyism," if such there must be, at long range. He had fought his way
into the foremost rank, not to tear down existing institutions or to
substitute one man for another in authority or to profit personally at
the expense of others: he would rise, no doubt to a heavenly sphere, but
in that should not disturb earthly conditions--it were the individual,
refractory and crude, who must be thrashed into peaceful, tolerant
attitudes--would carve out a new place or adapt himself to an old one,
enabling direction and enforcement in a manner at once effective and for
the betterment of all mankind. A laudable thought, perhaps, and with an
organization in keeping with his power to subjugate Hideyoshi might have
become in truth a god--self-made, self-standing, and self-perpetuating:
as he no doubt planned and fairly believed within the doing of man.
Purposing to distribute and maintain separately these greater divisions
of human interest and essential development, the kwambaku had as wisely
or unwisely sent Ieyasu into the newer regions at Tokyo, hoping to
transfer as far as possible from their capital, not only a possible
rival, but the larger business activities of the empire; he had left the
mikado, his court and the kuge (royalty) at Kyoto, best fitted as he
believed by environment and tradition to perpetuate authority on the one
hand and engender respect on the other; with religion or society in the
narrower sense he had little to do and much less concern: both seemed
essential or vital to priest or layman, nobleman or peasant alike, hence
the better adapted without seat or prestige to encourage, less deny; his
own fortress he believed well established at Ozaka.
Here he could look out, at close range, upon the best that a nation had
evolved or the worst suffered; wealth and poverty were alike interesting
and incumbent questions. Strength within and weakness without those
walls afforded a contrast deep in purport. To the southward, not far
distant, lay Nara, treasured home of the beautiful in art as well as the
profound of learning. Kyoto, the capital, no farther away, sheltered the
revered and the dignified in statesmanship and authority. The trader's
mart and the producer's seat, least tasteful to him, had been
transported and established farthest off: intrusted to hands that he
believed best fitted for that and no other, Hideyoshi sought to set
himself down to the realization of a larger desire, that other faith,
the reincarnation, an inter-perpetuation and glorification of self and
self alone.
"You are my only hope, Yodogima. Let faithfulness adjust itself not to
the exigencies of mean occasion, but give me a son; the golden thread
must be stranded unbroken. Ishida shall serve, and the captains honor;
the wealth and the fashion and the culture of all men henceforth bows at
your bidding."
"Do not tempt me, my lord; I should rather trust Kami; the glitter but
disheartens me: in prayer I have faith."
"I would deny you nothing: only bear me a son."
"Then grant me fair. Remove these fawning, cringing courtiers, and bide
you here; I am only human."
"Perhaps more. Yet I'll vow you safe in hands I know--Ishida never yet
played me false. Come; out with it; who is there, that you prefer?
Hideyoshi may wax blind, when occasion requires, but he need not for
that be treated as dumb--to the workings of conscience or fancy. My wife
loves: is her husband but a scapegoat?"
"It may be true, and she none the less abused thus accused. Take this
man Ishida from the castle, and keep him without. Perhaps then you shall
know that a woman may love and yet discern, if not command. I am your
wife, and shall serve you as decreed; a chance is all that I shall ask
or that you may require."
Ashamed of his conduct and mortified over anxiety, Hideyoshi did not as
bid, but left the castle with his suit, including the reluctant Ishida;
who by long years of faithful attendance had so ingratiated
himself--designing accordingly--that the kwambaku had already been put
to straits upon more than one occasion to find a real or plausible
excuse for keeping the fellow longer in his service. Nor was Yodogima
altogether alone in her estimation of him; many of the kwambaku's oldest
and most trusted friends had suspicioned the wily body-servant's good
faith, in fact, at this early day mistrusted ulterior motives and cross
purposes should the master accidentally or otherwise happen to die.
The sudden departure, therefore, of Hideyoshi, seemingly miffed and more
than ever under the influence of Ishida, who grew thereby less in favor
among the captains, roused some of them to greater concern, if not about
somebody's sanity, then as to their own welfare.
Among these grizzled or enthusiastic warriors and supporters none took
to heart more than Kuroda the matter of Hideyoshi's seeming change; the
two had grown up together, from early days, the one as retainer, the
other his aid, and they loved each other as only men similarly situated
and suited can love. Ishida, however, had poisoned the elder, and with
his establishment at Fushima--selected on account of its isolation yet
accessibility--the veteran fighter, Kuroda, was at last turned from the
door.
"It is a terrible blow, Yodogima, to be torn from a lifelong
friendship," said he, to her, shortly afterward, while sitting in the
fall of evening, at the Ozaka castle, overlooking the vast throngs
around, who came and went with less attending joy or sorrow, "and Ishida
is to blame. Yet I cannot criticise your resolve; you have fought a
noble battle, my dear child: you did right, and there isn't a man worth
his while in Hideyoshi's service but would stand by you to the last--I
wonder; has the kwambaku lost his mind?"
"No. He has, though, lost confidence in me," replied Yodogima,
suppressing with difficulty the tears fast rising in her downcast eyes.
"Impossible!"
"It is true."
"Then Ishida has done more than play the traitor; he has vilified a good
woman: more, he has sought to ruin a worthy wife. I swear it, he shall
rue the day."
In all these years Yodogima had done everything in her power to live the
life of a faithful, dutiful, and appreciative wife--such as the law and
the pleasure of man had enforced. No longer might she question the act,
or consult morals; she had chosen to abide the sterner edicts of a
social organism utterly beyond the revision or prevision of any one
individual, much less a woman: who had neither voice nor hand in the
making, nor could suggest its undoing. Yet the closer the reality the
more transcendant became her one inspiration. The star that had guided
her from infancy shone the brighter for the gloom; that enshrouded a
heart, in which there lived a conscience: the dictates of which had long
ago flung her upon the mercies of a less grinding, more tolerant fate.
"I will be true to my Kami, though declared false by all the creeds of
all the gods," promised she, to herself, long after the grey-haired
Kuroda had gone: when the stars had inspired that larger comprehension
than of things we think we know.
The night brought, too, its peace of rest, and on the morrow Yodogima
awakened to a juster realization of affairs close at hand; swift
couriers brought tidings of a great change at the seat of authority,
Fushima--lately established by Hideyoshi as his own official residence,
but just now turned over to Hidetsugu, his nephew, whom he had adopted
and made kwambaku, he himself assuming the title of Taiko.
Scorn, therefore, began, presently, to take the place of due
consideration; rumor travelled fast, and the master's change of title,
and the adoption of an heir, soon raised the question of failure:
Yodogima was now charged with vilest remission, and had not resignation
sooner prepared the way she, too, must have fallen before the rank
avalanche of duller ingratitude than follows in the wake of blind
assumption.
The nation had been wronged, and the man who had placed his trust in
her, abused: it devolved upon her and none other to right the grievous
evil that had apparently been accepted as final.
"What in His name can I do?" begged and plead the princess, in the only
way that she knew.
Then Oyea stealthily came to Ozaka, advising and befriending.
The older of the two wives did not threaten; she had learned by
experience and conversion that the more effective course lay in subtler
means, perhaps in truth.
"Why don't you visit Hiyeisan? There is a temple there--"
"I thought you had turned Christian?" interceded Yodogima,
thoughtlessly.
"So I have; but you may need not some forgiveness; circumstance no
sooner governs than fulfilment predicates--the act, if not our meed.
What matter how or where we pray and do, when wrought in heaven's
likening span? It is the consequence, and not its revelation, that makes
duty paramount. Therefore, seek you, who have only to choose; it is for
such as I to fashion, and when this particular god shall have served you
as he never did me, why, then, you, too, may have occasion to flit and
none to reason. I tell you there are as many ways as creeds, or less,
and I'd try them out, all of them, though not so beautiful."
Yodogima laughed outright in spite of conditions:
"What in heaven's name has beauty to do with religion?"
"My dear Yodogima; it has everything to do with it; as it has to do with
all things and everybody, the gods, their churches, and our bounties
included. Do you suppose, for a minute, that I should be here, to-day,
were it not for you? And it's a part of my religion to serve and trust
that trust may serve."
"How kind!"
"You won't fail me, will you, Yodogima?"
"I'll think about it; I do not wish to be narrow, or--outwitted."
An unlooked-for restlessness appeared to have swept into the land; and
all the barons and captains grew uneasy with inaction or impatient of
conditions. To Yodogima it seemed that in some way she alone were
responsible for the cause, if not the effect, of such unheard-of
conditions. Hideyoshi knew better; and smarting with shame or repenting
of foolhardiness turned again toward Ozaka.
No such joy had come to Yodogima since the day Ieyasu promised his love
and protection. While Oyea had never broken faith, and still professed
friendship, the younger wife had long ago amply discovered the reason,
and knew fairly in her own heart that once a wife in fact no husband
might share his love or respect or favor without breaking the tenderer
thread, no matter what the demands or the edicts of society and of law,
or both. Whether for good or for ill there could be no compromise where
an affinity had laid its hand upon that and that alone vital, if not
sacred, unto itself. The older wife's interest had resolved only the
shielding of an inner vanity, as Hideyoshi's accusations laid bare the
outward appearance of that same inborn, unmanageable tendency: call it
by what name one might, govern as the world should see fit, it were yet
a force no less determinate of man than absolute in the revelation of
God.
"I did you a very great wrong," began Hideyoshi, by way of remission, as
Yodogima and he strolled away, through the bramble, at the hillside,
toward the lower castle wall; "and, as you see, in recognition of your
superior trust and my acknowledged duty, I have willingly left Ishida
behind. What more would you have me do, lady patience?"
"Love me, truly love me, my lord; then, also, you might, sometimes,
address me, as Yodogima--only Yodogima, if no more."
"And, will you, too, call me Hideyoshi?"
Yodogima bowed low, and the scarlet rushed to her face. The soft, warm
air of early spring fanned the flame, and Hideyoshi felt as never before
the glow and the warmth of rising confidence. An image carved in stone
of the good and the great stood near at their side and returning the
cherished salutation of that one higher held our taiko for the first
time in his life approached this in some way fashioned god who had for
many thousand or more years held and swayed the hearts of a nation so
deep-grounded and far-seeing that no truth revealed or possibility
conjectured had escaped their discerning, eager quest for that we wish
were what we would it were. And approaching, he did the one thing that
really distinguishes man and establishes for him a world apart.
Hideyoshi prayed; and Yodogima marvelled the force of an environment.
All her prayers had arisen within the solicitude of tried-out
conviction, a consciousness fraught with distrust in everything not
wholly proven or self-satisfying, were invoked of a Being that she knew,
One standing revealed in the light of His beneficence, not some unknown
but hoped-for God, conjured as the result of a longing on her part to
escape the heartless dark of earth's vain, momentary alternations.
Follow that beacon--above the need or beneath the power of faith--she
would; there could be no doubt in her mind as to His supremacy, Its
ultimatum; but might she not for that, without overstepping the borders
of a bidden track, nor any the less losing sight of her own true
inspiration, might she not, in her flight toward an unalterably
preconceived and self-attainable end so govern her steps that no
conflict ensue with others bent on no less holy, yet more uncertain,
grounds?
The stars seemed whirling in space measured and adjusted to the balance
of a perfect equilibrium; all the elements, no matter whether it be the
rushing of the winds, or the rumblings of an avalanche, or the belching
forth of fire and the downpourings of waters from heaven upon earth,
each found in due time and with perfect accord its own properly allotted
place or plan; the soul and the body lived their destined duality with
no more positive dissolution than death itself scarce renders; the
negative forces of earth and eternity, heaven or oblivion, were but the
positive's own postulate, working out its never-ending, all-propelling
grind toward an essential individuality, supreme and overreaching,
whether wrought in the fiery evolutions of fate or suffered of an
humbler, more easily gotten, commonly adapted belief, its godhead a
trinity or as we please, and its doctrine but a faith or something less:
why deny anything, anybody, or their pleasure?
Jokoin had fully demonstrated the larger possibilities of any ordinary
sort of real susceptibility, Oyea had suggested the temple as a more
fitting place, and a particular one as the most likely of transmission
if not remission, and Hideyoshi really made no outward protest against
its individual use or secular purposes: there must be some strange
potency hidden underneath the force of prayer wafted within the portals
of a place guarded so sacredly and approached in faith. The church too,
then, either temple or edifice, held its secret, perchance worked an
instrumentality, no doubt brought compensations that she, in her lone
environment, had failed to realize: the world demanded of her that she
leave no thing undone, make every effort to resolve its higher blessing,
and through that and that alone she must and could attain her own true
ideality.
Hideyoshi had, for all she knew or could surmise, done his part and
faithfully.
"You have now my very soul, Yodogima, and are proffered as well its
beggarly hull. All these trappings, with which I have fairly endowed
you--a castle not made with common hands, the finest silks evolved of
Uena's grace, food that no god might disdain, and service from no lesser
educator than time itself--are nothing as compared with the spirit I
would invoke. Hear me, O Benten, O Yodogima, O Eternity; I must have
life, shall survive the grave. Grant me this, mother of time, goddess on
earth, and love to men; I can do no more; the blood of man is final; it
is supreme, an only offering. Let me survive," begged Hideyoshi, utterly
oblivious of anything and everything, except the one woman who stood
over with anxious, motionless face.
"It shall be done," replied she, not any less driven or conscious of the
broad seas of uncertainty raising and lowering their frail bark upon its
never ceasing, always mysterious trend or disregarding travail.