“THE mistake—you will admit it was a mistake?—was to have countenanced
such a match at all,” said the Lady Saito Ichigo.
Her husband’s manner was less sure, less unyielding than it had been in
many days. Indeed, there was a slightly apologetic tone in his voice,
and he avoided the angry eyes of his spouse. He too had seen the arrival
of the Spider!
“Well, well, let us admit it, then, for the sake of peace. The marriage
was a mistake. But consider, our son’s happiness—nay, his very life!—was
at stake.”
He lowered his voice.
“I will tell you in confidence that which I had discovered. They had
already made their plans to marry.”
“Pff!” Lady Saito waved the matter aside as unbelievable. “Will you tell
me how they were to do this thing? Marriage, fortunately, is not such an
easy matter without the consent of the parents. Moreover, the woman was
under bonds to her keeper.”
“You forget there are other unions possible to lovers. You should know
that many such start bravely on the long journey to the Meido when it is
impossible to marry in this life.”
Lady Saito turned her face slowly toward her husband and fixed him with
a piercing, bitter glare.
“That,” said Ichigo, gently, “was the union contemplated by our
children.”
His wife drew in her breath in that peculiar, hissing fashion of the
Japanese. Her beady little eyes glittered like fire.
“That was what _she_—the Spider woman—induced my son to do! You see, do
you not, how completely she has seduced him—even from his duty to his
parents and his ancestors?”
She beat out the minute blaze from her pipe, digging into it with her
forefinger. Then, first coughing harshly to attract the attention of the
young people, she called out loudly:
“Come hither, if you please! I say, come! You seem to forget you are no
longer in the geisha-house. It is the voice of supreme authority which
summons you now. A cup of tea, if you please—and water for my honorable
feet!”
She repeated the demand twice, in a peremptory voice; and now she arose
to her feet and advanced a step almost threateningly toward the young
couple.
They had been smiling into each other’s eyes. They were oblivious of
everything and every one in the room, for they were in that exalted and
enraptured condition of first love which makes the individual seem
almost stupid and obtuse to all save the loved one. Only dimly the words
of their mother had reached them, and they stirred like children rudely
awakened from some beautiful dream. The smile was still on the face of
the girl as she turned toward her mother-in-law; but it slowly faded,
leaving her pale, confused, and timorous. She met the malevolent gaze of
the older woman, and began to tremble.
She tried to speak, and her hand reached out flutteringly toward her
husband—a charming, helpless little gesture that warmed him to the soul.
He inclosed the little reaching hand, and thus, hand in hand, they faced
the enraged lady.
“Your manners, my good girl, are in keeping with the geisha-house. Is it
the fashion there to ignore the voice of authority?”
The bride’s large, dark eyes had widened in innocent surprise. Only
partially she seemed to comprehend the older woman’s attitude. She had
been but a day in the house of the parents-in-law. No one as yet had
taught her, the cherished, petted, adored star of the House of Slender
Pines, that the position of a daughter-in-law is often as lowly as that
of a servant. Not even by Matsuda had she ever been thus offensively
addressed. She said, stammeringly:
“I—I—have not heard the voice of which you speak, august lady.”
A cruel smile curled the lips of her mother-in-law.
“Then it is time, my girl, that you kept your ears wide open.”
She sat down upon her heels abruptly by the hibachi.
“Tea is desirable for the honorable insides. Water for my feet, which
are tired!”
The girl’s eyes turned inquiringly toward her husband. He had grown
darkly red. For a moment he seemed about to speak protestingly to his
mother; then in a whisper he murmured to his bride:
“It is your—duty!”
Moonlight’s shocked glance had gone from her husband’s face to the
opposite shoji. There, in dumb show, a maid beckoned to her. Without a
word her lovely little head bowed in meek assent; she began upon her
first menial task.
When she was gone Gonji looked scowlingly at the back of his mother’s
head—she had turned her face rigidly from him. He felt keenly the danger
threatening his wife, the one he adored. He knew the exact power in the
hands of the mother-in-law, the cruel whip of authority it was possible
for her to wield. That Moonlight would be forced to succumb to the
common lot of many unhappy wives he had not realized. Secretly he
determined to help her in every way possible within his power.
“What has come over you?” His mother’s voice broke upon his miserable
reverie, and it was as harsh as the one she employed to his wife. “Is it
a new fashion of the geisha-house perchance—to answer a parent’s
question with silence?”
“Did you question me, mother? I am sorry I did not hear you.”
“Oh, it is of no consequence. Besides, you are not listening, even now.
Your eyes are still upon the screen through which the insignificant
daughter-in-law passed to do me service.”
He flushed and bit his lips. Something in his mother’s baleful look
moved him to an impetuous cry:
“Mother! Do not hate my wife! If you could but know her as she is, so
sweet and lovely and—”
“There is no medicine for a fool!” snarled his mother, enraged at the
boy’s apparent infatuation.
Moonlight, who had pushed the sliding doors open, heard the words, and
now she paused, looking from one to the other. Gonji hastened across to
her and seized the pail of water from her hand.
“It is too heavy for hands so small—and so lovely!” he cried, and then,
as though aghast at his own words, he again pleadingly faced his mother.
“We have many servants. Why give such employment to my wife?”
“Since when,” demanded the mother, hoarsely, “did a childless son become
master in his father’s house?”
“These are modern times, mother,” he protested. “She has not been bred
for service such as this!”
“Then it is time we undertook her education,” said his mother,
ominously. “In the house of the honorable mother-in-law she will quickly
learn her proper place.”
She put out her feet, and the girl knelt and washed them.
Alone that evening in their room, they clung together like frightened
children. It had been a hard, a cruel day for both.
“It is true,” she said, searching his face in the hope of finding a
denial there, “that your parents bitterly hate me.”
“They will outgrow it. It is not so with my father, and later you will
win my mother’s affection. Your sweetness, beauty, goodness, beloved
one, will win her even against her will.”
She held him back from her, with her two little hands resting flatly on
his breast.
“They despise me because I am a geisha? That is why they treat me so.”
“No, it is not that only. It is often the case at first in the house of
the parents-in-law. It is your duty to serve them—to obey even their
cruel caprices. But”—and he drew her into a warm embrace—“it will not be
for long! Maybe a year—longer, if the gods decree it! You can bear it
for a little while, can you not, for me?”
“And after that?” she persisted, with the clear-eyed innocence of a
child.
“After that? Why, the gods are good!” he cried, joyously. “We will have
our own home. The humblest daughter-in-law is elevated with the coming
of an heir!”
Her eyes were very wide, and in their dark depths he saw a piteous look
of terror there. She caught at his hand and clung to it.
“Gonji! Suppose—suppose it is not possible for me—to please the gods!”
she gasped. “Ah!”—as he hastened to reassure her—“it is said by the wise
ones that a geisha is but a fragile toy, for transient pleasure only,
but with neither the body nor the heart to mother a race!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------