The taiko bounded up. That voice had filled him as a chorus resounding
tidings all but heard in vain. No footstep had broken his reverie; the
sight of her seemed as impossible as the halo involving his desire; the
air he breathed had lost its fragrance, the taste congealed, and the
touch deadened, but another sense had called him to life; Yodogima
confronted him.
There she stood, within reach, sublimer, if could be, than before. Words
had vainly made her message better understood: not a moment would he
lose, yet--
"Oh, God, who am I to stand here like dumb? How is it, these limbs fail
me now, oh, so bitterly? What devil stands between us? Or, is it lack of
devil, and Kami that denies? Answer me, you who can!"
Hideyoshi fell to the floor whence he had risen. The golden bowl was not
broken, for the want of one. Charm had not entered, hence could not
depart. No affinity proffered its good office. Love held forth elsewhere
in the mighty circle, and these two searched their way under a solstice
as blank as inevitable.
Yodogima, too, sank down, disappointed and fearful, upon the mat in
front of her lawful lord. The child lay coddling in its lap, and her
eyes beheld therein a joy that radiates only as ordained. The picture
overcame him. He could not face the truth of her position, and her eyes
riveting upon the sacred book unfolding before them denied him the only
lie that man ever made in virtuous part. All the laws of heaven or man,
cause and effect, could stay the hand nor deaden the heart to that
loftier reach, that unquenchable thirst, that touchless affinity, which
made man what he is, as compared with the pitiful sight we sometimes
see, only to wish it an unreality, that hairy monster, perched upon his
hinder part, his arms drooping in front and his face a blank, that
living, suggestive, appealing, undriveable thing we are always wont but
mostly loath to call baboon.
"Oh!" cried he, inwardly, "am I so lost as to sit here as if mad? This
woman is stronger than I, in the face of harsher trials. Be a man,
Hideyoshi."
Thence he arose, and approaching, vainly seated himself directly in
front of Yodogima. The child cooed on, but two strong hearts waxed high
over it, with larger interest and harder conflict, as lions trample
their brood or the bird-kind but empty a nest in its defense.
"Pardon me, Yodogima," begged he, cowering before her, his very soul the
price, "it is so sudden--let me see your eyes, Yodogima--speak to me; I
cannot bear longer the suspense."
Yodogima considerately raised her eyes to his: they reflected back only
the likeness of a man who had never yet failed to penetrate deeper, but
now the heart seemed obscured by that self-same image.
"The child, Yodogima; let me look into its face."
Yodogima tenderly, perhaps proudly, tendered the little babe, robed and
attended as if want to invite really the gods to worship at nativity's
shrine. It was a pretty boy, bearing traces in every feature of its
chivalrous ancestry: Hideyoshi had been proud, would have prostituted
every virtue that he possessed to proffer it the crown he had wrought,
but--
"Ieyasu!" conjured he, half in rage, half in fear.
Yodogima turned white, then livid; the child's doom induced the former,
but duty quickly inspired thoughts restoring a healthier, heartier
action of that one sense underlying the most vital of nature's primal
instincts.
"Calm yourself, Yodogima; have no fear of man or devil; Hideyoshi would
burn down there before the name or a hair of that child's mother should
suffer the discredit of a moment's reflection. More I cannot say now:
grant me time; it shall not be long; I would go no farther than Azuchi."
Bowing low, the taiko withdrew, and not stopping longer than to call the
norimonos (chair men) hurried on, each stride burning deeper into his
heart the dread that gripped him more harshly than any death.
"What is it that makes you reticent?" demanded he, of Oyea, who trembled
at his presence. "I thought your discretion, if not his tongue, of
better promise."
"Spare me, oh, spare me, honorable master; it is not I, but the temple
that betrayed you."
"Ah--and he was there?"
"No."
"Then you have been--"
"No, no; yes, yes--"
"And know the truth, as I do now. Come, demean yourself; I must return;
tongues are no doubt already wagging, whereas yours mutely convinces."
The taiko returned thence faster than he had come. A cloud had risen
from his mind; there in the presence of the one who had stood at his
right through all those tempestuous years the truth had at last dawned:
success attended insofar as others profited: thirst might be inherited,
but genius transmitted--never.
On the way it became necessary to pass directly the new castle at
Fushima, built for Hidetsugu, and occupied as well, for the present, by
Ieyasu as a guest while returning from Nagoya to Yedo. Hideyoshi,
though anxious, could not resist the temptation to stop--assigning as an
excuse some urgency that he and Ieyasu visit the mikado, since the
opportunity presented itself.
"But the child? its birth? why not proclaimed?" urged Ieyasu,
cautiously.
Hideyoshi attempted no immediate answer, but Harunaga did: pulling
Ieyasu by the sleeve and suggesting it a good time to make way with the
taiko.
Now this perfectly feasible undertaking--Hideyoshi was utterly
unprepared and without sufficient escort--somehow impressed itself
directly upon him, though he had neither seen the act performed nor
heard the words spoken by Harunaga; whom he had recognized, no sooner
than seen, only a few moments before, and upon inquiry found to be a
transient guest of Ieyasu's, traveling in train toward the castle
Ozaka.
Our taiko marvelled eagerly the circumstance, and bided patiently some
opportunity.
News of the birth had in fact reached the bonze--in readiness--at
Hiyeisan even before Hideyoshi himself had been at all informed. Also
the gossip attending the taiko's failure of recognition: stranger yet
Oyea's enforced acknowledgment concerning the temple and Yodogima were
known to Harunaga in time for him to discard his disguise as Katsutoya,
a bonze, and calling to his aid some two hundred horsemen, held in
hiding, make his way as far as Fushima before the taiko had arrived.
Ieyasu hesitated; true he had not suspicioned Harunaga's motive, nor
suspected his knowledge of or interest in Yodogima's affairs, not at
all; but his interests dictated, as he believed and Hideyoshi surmised,
an altogether less inhuman course.
"I am an old man," began Hideyoshi, addressing Ieyasu, openly, and not
without some pretty well remembered impressions vividly made by none
other than Yodogima's long ago accurately aimed thrusts; "I find my
sword heavy; please carry it for me."
Ieyasu answered by saying:
"I had a dream, last night: I dreamt that Tengu, the hobgoblin,
confronted me; and, of enormous proportions, resolved himself into the
size of an ant sitting upon my arm: I swallowed him."
"Good," replied Hideyoshi; "I see the point; I am rightly rebuked, for
going about unattended."
"Permit me to propose the good offices of Harunaga, as an escort thence
to Ozaka: I need not vouch for him, a gentleman, and the taiko is--"
"A father," interposed Hideyoshi, looking Harunaga squarely in the face.
The latter winced, but proffered his services, as urged and designed by
Ieyasu.
At Ozaka, notwithstanding Yodogima's assurances, strange preparations
were making for defence. No word had escaped her lips as to the taiko's
reception, or purpose in leaving, or intentions about returning. An ugly
silence cast its spell over them, yet Hidetsugu, the kwambaku, made his
jealousy against the newborn the more apparent by finally withdrawing to
reside permanently at Fushima, and Ishida not at all thereby deceived,
began forthwith the organizing of a new force no less to protect the
taiko than to enforce the rights of Yodogima and her recently-born
claimant to his lordship's intended succession.
"Did you think me long gone, Yodogima?" inquired Hideyoshi, approaching
her, at ease, and alone, in the great chamber, just off her own boudoir.
"I was delayed no more against luck than strangely; Harunaga is here,
now, in the castle: in fact, came with me."
His words were wasted, for Yodogima at once arose to greet him, and
never before did she seem quite as graceful; her hair, loose and
massive, hung in wavelets far below her slender neck; the eyes fairly
burned as before, softened only with a compassion new and compelling; a
complexion yet bearing the undercast of an ordeal intensifying the more
its naturally olive-like hue, that long flowing gown of silken white
which Hideyoshi had longed to see, and a voice modulated with the
sweetness of motherhood--the taiko believed her in truth a goddess,
thence prostrated himself at the purport of her answer:
"You alone are welcome, Hideyoshi."
"But the child, Yodogima?"
"Shall I present it?"
"Yes; it is mine; I name him Hideyori; let lanterns be hung everywhere,
proclaiming Hideyoshi's successor; you are his rightful mother, and my
sole support; believe me, Yodogima; I swear it."