SO it was in the honorable house of his father, and of the hundred
august ancestors whom they accused him of dishonoring, that Gonji again
saw the Spider.
Into the houses of the most exalted the geisha flutters with the free
familiarity of a pampered house pet. No festivity, however private, is
considered complete without her. She is as necessary as the flowers that
bedeck the house, the viands, and the sake.
Upon a humid night in the season of greatest heat, and in the glow of a
thousand fireflies, the Spider danced in the gardens of the house of
Saito. Her kimono was vermilion, embroidered with dragons of gold. Gold
too were her obi and her fan, and red and gold were the ornaments that
glistened like fire in her hair. Yet more brilliant, more sparklingly,
gleamed and shone the eyes of the dancer, and her scarlet lips were
redder than the poppies in her hair, and held an hypnotic allure for the
Lord Saito Gonji, watching her in a breathless silence that fairly
pained him.
Every gesture, every slightest flutter of her sleeve, her hand, her fan,
every smallest turn or motion of her bewitching head, was directed at
the guest of honor, the son and heir of the house of Saito. For him
alone she seemed to dance. To him she threw her joyous smiles, and, in
the end, when the dance was done, it was at his feet she knelt, raising
her naïvely coy, half-questioning glance. Then, very softly and with
gentle solicitation:
“At your sole honorable service, noble lord,” she said. “What is your
pleasure next?”
He said, like one awakening from some strange dream or trance:
“It is my pleasure, geisha, that you look into my eyes.”
She glanced up timidly, as if troubled and surprised. A wistfully joyous
light came into her dark eyes; then they remained unmovingly fixed upon
his. Very softly, that those about them might not hear, he whispered:
“I saw your face dimly in the firefly-light. I was possessed with but
one ambition—to look into your eyes!”
Her pretty head drooped so low that now it touched his knee. At the
contact he trembled and drew sharply away from her. Alarmed, fearing she
had unwittingly offended him, she raised her head and looked at him with
a mutely questioning glance. There was a cloud, dark and very
melancholy, upon the face of the one she had been ordered to entertain.
She thought of the instructions of Matsuda: that it should be her
paramount duty to beguile and distract the Lord Saito Gonji. Her fortune
for life might be made by succeeding in arousing him to a joyous mood.
But, lo! the one she sought to please drew back from her, gloomy,
troubled.
Her rapid rise to fame had not brought to the Spider the peculiar joy
she had anticipated. Fame carries ever with it its bitter savor, and,
although she had not alone become the darling of the celebrated
geisha-house, but had brought fame and fortune to her master, many of
the things she had most cared for she had been obliged to forego in her
new position as star of the House of Slender Pines.
No longer was it possible for her to be shielded by the loving arms of
the Okusama. Out into the broadest limelight even the delighted Okusama
had pushed her, and this blinding light entailed a thousand duties of
which she had only vaguely heard from the patronizing elder geishas. She
had ceased to be the cuddled and petted little Moonlight, loved and
stroked and tossed about by the geishas, because of her beauty and
ingenuous wit. Suddenly she had become the Spider! It was a new and
fearful name that terrified her.
Matsuda, proud of her success, and at last completely won over,
surrounded her with every luxury. So far he had forced upon the girl
none of the odious exactions often demanded of the geishas by their
masters, even though the law had defined the exact services to which he
was legally entitled.
A thousand lovers a geisha might have, said the unwritten law, but to
possess one alone was fatal! She must place a guard of iron before her
heart! A geisha must sip at love as the bee culls the honey from the
blossom, lingering but a moment over each. The rivers and the many pits
of death were filled with the bodies of the hapless ones who had gone
outside this law, who had dared to permit the passionate heart to escape
beyond the prescribed bounds.
Moonlight, with all the witching arts of the geisha at her finger-tips,
with a beauty as rare and mysterious as though she were a princess of
some new world, had found it thus far an easy task to follow the rules
laid down for her class. Like a fragile flower that must not be touched
lest its bloom be soiled, the master of the geisha-house jealously
protected his star from all possible contamination. She was held out as
a lure to captivate and draw to his house the rich and noble ones; but,
like some precious jewel in a casket, she was but to be seen, not
touched! Matsuda was determined to save his most precious possession for
the highest of bidders. Now his patience had met its due reward. The
most illustrious head of the house of the exalted Saito solicited his
services!
So, while Matsuda gloated over the rich reward to be reaped surely from
his lordly patron, the Spider was looking with frightened eyes into
those of the Lord Saito Gonji, and she trembled and turned very pale
under his somber glance. All her gay insouciance, her saucy, quick
repartee, the teasing, witching little graces for which she now was
noted, seemed to have deserted her. It troubled her that she was unable
to obey the command of her master and make his most noble patron smile.
Within the piercing eyes which sought her own she seemed to read only
some tragic question, which, alas, she felt unable to answer.
“I desire to please you, noble sir,” she said, plaintively, and added,
with an impulsive motion of her little hands: “Alas! It is my duty!”
For the first time a faint smile quivered across the young man’s lips;
but he did not speak. He continued to regard her in that musing fashion,
as though he studied every feature of her face and drank in its
loveliness with something of resignation and despair.
His curious silence affected her. Was it not possible to arouse the
strange one, then, to some animation and interest? Timidly she put out
her hand—a mute, charming little gesture—then rested it upon his own. As
though her touch had some electric power which stirred him to the
depths, he leaned suddenly toward her, inclosing her hand in a close,
almost painful grip. Now hungrily, pleadingly, his look enveloped her.
His voice trembled with the emotion he sought vainly to control.
“Geisha, if it were possible—if we belonged in another land—if it were
not for the customs of the ancestors—I would tell you what is in my
heart!”
Like a child, wondering and curious, she answered:
“I pray you, tell me! To keep a troubled secret is like carrying a cup
brim full!”
“I will ask you a question,” he said incisively. “Wilt thou be my wife
for all the lives yet to come?”
As he spoke the forbidden words the Spider turned very pale. She sought
to withdraw her trembling hands from his, but he held to them with a
passionate tenacity. She could not speak. She could but look at him
mutely, piteously; and her lovely, pleading gaze but added to the man’s
distraction.
“Answer me!” he entreated. “Make me the promise, beautiful little
mousmé!”
His vehemence and passion frightened her. She tried to avert her face,
to turn it aside from his burning gaze; but he brought his own
insistently close to hers. She could not escape his impelling eyes. At
last, her bosom heaving up and down like a little troubled sea, she
stammered:
“You speak so strangely, noble sir. I—I—am but—a geisha of the House of
Slender Pines. Thou art as far above my sphere as—as—are the honorable
stars in the heavens.”
Her voice had a quality of exquisite terror, as though she sought vainly
to thrust aside some hypnotic force to which she yearned to yield. It
aroused but the ardor of her lover.
“It is not possible,” he murmured, “for one to be above thee, little
geisha. Thou art lovelier than all the visions of the esteemed Sun Lady
herself. I am thy lover for all time. I desire to possess thee utterly
in all the lives yet to come. Make me the promise, beautiful mousmé,
that thou wilt travel with me—that thou wilt be mine, mine only!”
She drew back as far from him as it was possible, with her hands
jealously held by his own. Her wide, frightened eyes were fixed in
terror upon his.
“I cannot speak the words!” she gasped. “I dare not speak them, august
one!”
For a moment his face, which had been lighted by excitement and passion,
darkened.
“You cannot then return my love?”
“Ah! They are not words for a geisha to speak. It is not for such as I
to make the long journey with one so illustrious as thou!”
A sob broke from her, and because she could no longer bear to meet his
burning gaze she hid her face with the motion of a child against their
clasped hands.
For a long moment there was silence between them. Louder, noisier, rose
the mirth of the revelers about them. A dozen geishas pulled at the
three-stringed instruments. As many more swayed and moved in the figures
of the classical dance. Like great, gaudy butterflies, their bright
wings fluttering behind them, the moving figures of the tea-maidens
passed before them. Almost it seemed as if they two had been purposely
set apart and forgotten. No one approached them. With concerted caution,
all avoided a glance in the direction of the guest of honor and the
famous one who had been chosen to beguile and save him. How well she had
performed her task one could see in the beaming face of Matsuda, the
uneasy face of the elder Lord Saito, and the somewhat scowling one of
the uncle of Ohano.
The Lord Gonji saw nothing of the relatives. He was oblivious indeed of
everything save the shining, drooped little head upon his hands.
Scarcely he knew his own voice, so superlatively gentle and wooing was
its tone.
“I pray you, give me complete happiness with the promise, beloved one,”
he entreated.
She raised her head slowly; and gravely, wistfully, her eyes now
questioned him. Dimly she realized the effect of such a union upon his
haughty family and the ancestors.
She was but a geisha, a cultivated toy, educated for the one purpose of
beguiling men and making their lot brighter. Like the painted and
grotesque comedian who tortured his limbs to make others laugh, so it
was the duty of a geisha to keep ever the laugh upon her lips, even
though the heart within her broke. It was not possible that to her, a
mere dancing girl, one was offering the entrancing opportunity of which
lovers whisper to each other. Her face was very pinched and white, the
eyes startlingly large, as she answered him:
“I dare not speak the words, noble sir. I do not know the way. The Meido
is very far off. We meet but once. Your honorable parents and the
ancestors would turn back one so humble and insignificant as I.”
“The honorable parents,” he gently explained, “can but point our duty in
the present life. In the lives yet to come we choose our own companions.
If I could—if it were possible—how gladly would I take thee also for
this present life.”
She drew back, puzzled, vaguely distressed.
“You—you do not wish me _now_ also?” she stammered, and there was a
shocked, dazed note in her voice. He saw what was in her mind, and it
startled him.
“Do you not know why they have summoned you here to-night?” he
questioned.
“At—at the command of my master,” she faltered. “I am here to—to please
thee, noble sir. If it please thee to make a jest—”
She broke off piteously and tried to smile. Her hands slipped from his
as he arose suddenly and looked down at her solemnly, where she still
knelt at his feet.
“You are here,” he said, “to celebrate my honorable betrothal to Takedo
Ohano-san.”
She did not move, but continued to stare up at him with the
dumb-stricken look of one unjustly punished. Then suddenly she sobbed,
and her little head rested upon the ground at his feet.
“Geisha!” He called to her sharply, commandingly, and yet with a world
of pleading emotion. Matsuda, hovering near, turned and looked
loweringly at the girl on the ground. Her face was humbly in the dust at
the feet of the Lord Saito Gonji. It was a position unworthy of a
geisha, and Matsuda moved furiously nearer to them. This was the work of
the Okusama, inwardly he fumed. Now when the geisha was put to the
greatest test she was found wanting. At the feet of the man when he
should have knelt at hers.
“Geisha!”
This time there was nothing but tenderness in his voice. He was
conscious of the fact that the girl at his feet was suffering. He loved
her, and was sure that life without her would be both intolerable and
worthless. He had begged her to travel with him upon the final “long
journey.” She, in her simple innocence, believed he had asked her in
marriage for this life also. Now, humiliated, she dared not look at him.
Down he knelt beside her; but when he sought to put his arms about her,
she sprang wildly to her feet. Not for a moment did she pause, but like
some hunted, terrified thing fled fleetly across the garden.
He started to follow, but stopped suddenly, blinded by the sudden excess
of madness and rage that swept over him. For, as she ran, her master,
Matsuda, doubled over in her path. His face was purple. His wicked
little eyes glittered like one gone insane, and his great thick lips
fell apart, showing the teeth like tusks of some wild beast. Gonji saw
the shining doubled fists as they rose in the air and descended upon the
head of the hapless Spider. Then he sprang forward like a madman,
leaping at the throat of Matsuda and tossing him aside like some unclean
thing.
She lay unmoving upon her back, her arms cast out like the wings of a
bird on either side. Gonji caught her up in his arms with a cry that
rang out weirdly over the gardens. It stopped the mirth of the revelers
and brought them in a hushed group about the pair. Now silence reigned
in the gardens of the Saito.
On the upper floor of the mansion the walls had been pushed entirely out
so that an open pavilion, flower-laden, made a charming retreat for the
“honorable interiors,” the ladies of the family, who might not, with
propriety, join their lords in the revelry. Here, unseen, these
“precious jewels of the household” might watch the celebration; but it
was the part of the geisha to entertain their lord. Theirs the lot to
receive him when, weary and worn, he must eventually return for rest.
Now, from their sake-sipping the ladies were aroused by that cry of
Saito Gonji. Over the lantern-hung, flower-laden trellis they leaned,
their shrill voices sounding strangely in the silence that had fallen
upon the entire company. Some one lighted a torch and swung it above the
group on the ground. Under its light the mother of Gonji, and his bride,
Ohano, saw the form of the Spider; and beside her, enveloping her in his
arms, whispering to and caressing her, was the Lord Saito Gonji.
Japanese women are trained to hide their deepest emotions. All the world
tells of their impassive stoicism; but human nature is human nature,
after all. So the bride shrieked like one who has lost his mind, but the
cry was strangled ere it was half uttered. When the Lady Saito’s hand
was withdrawn from the mouth of the bride, the pallid-faced Ohano
slipped humbly to her knees, and, shaking like a leaf in a storm,
stammered:
“I—I—b-but laughed at the antics of the comedians. Oh, d-d-d-did you
see—”
Here she broke off and hid her face, with a muffled sob, upon the breast
of the elder woman. Without a word the latter led the girl inside, and
the maidens drew the shoji into place, closing the floor.
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