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 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
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, 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 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.
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