THE days stretched into weeks; the weeks into months. It is not possible
to account for the various delays that arise in time of war.
Four months had passed since his marriage to Ohano, when at last the
welcome summons came. His honorable regiment was to go to the front!
Gonji felt like one released from a cruel bondage. His very heart leaped
within him like a mad thing. Even to Ohano he spoke, and although his
words had a deep ulterior meaning, she was gratified and elated. They
stood as a proof at least to her of her elevation. He had noticed her!
Undoubtedly she had leaped forward a thousand paces in the estimation of
her lord. He recognized her importance now at the crucial moment.
Naturally vain and proud, Ohano’s mind had been entirely concerned with
the attention she was attracting from all as the wife of the Lord Saito
Gonji. People pointed her out as she rode abroad in the lacquered
carriages of the Saito family, and everywhere was recounted the
illustrious history of his ancestors and of her own important mission,
now when the last of the exalted race was sacrificing his life for
Japan.
And now her lord himself had condescended to notice her, and for the
first time his somewhat wild eyes had looked at Ohano with an element of
gentleness and kindness. His words were curious, and long after he was
gone to the city Ohano turned them over in her mind and pondered their
meaning; and when, that night, he returned to her for the last time, she
begged him to repeat them, saying that the presence of the
parents-in-law had confused her hearing. She wished rightly and clearly
to understand his words, so that when he was quite gone from her she
might the better carry out his wishes.
With solemn dignity he repeated the instructions:
“Take care of your honorable health and of that of my descendant. Choose
wisely a companion upon the Long Journey, for it is lonely to travel.
The world is peopled with many souls, but only two may travel the final
path together.”
Again she pondered the words, and she shivered under her husband’s
melancholy glance. What did the strange words imply? Consideration for
her future merely? Surely he must know that, as the wife of one so
illustrious as he must become, she would never marry another in his
place. (Every Japanese woman resigns her husband to war service with the
proud and pious belief and hope that he will not return, but will
gloriously sacrifice life for the cause.)
Finally she said, as she watched his face stealthily:
“It will be unnecessary for the humble one to choose another companion.
Glorious will be the privilege of awaiting the time when she will join
your honor on the journey.”
He gave her a deep look, which seemed to pierce and search to the very
depths of her heart.
“Ohano,” he said, “_thou_ knowest I did not marry thee save for the time
of this life.”
She sat up stiffly, mechanically, moistening her dry lips. All the petty
vanity with which she had upheld herself since the day when she had
married Saito Gonji now seemed to drop from her in shreds. Her many days
of supreme devotion, and even adoration, for the Lord Gonji—and they
stretched back as far as her childhood days—came up to torture her.
Looking into her husband’s face, Ohano knew, without questioning, who it
was who would make the final precious journey with him. She was to be
wife only for the short span of his lifetime. That other one, the
Spider—whose image in effigy she had pricked so mercilessly with a
thousand spiteful pins in order to destroy her soul, as she fain would
have done her body—_she_ was to be the wife of Saito Gonji for all time!
She who had stolen him from Ohano upon her very wedding-night!
Her face became convulsed. The eyes seemed to have disappeared from her
face. Presently, breathing heavily, her hands clutching her breast to
repress the emotion which would show despite her best efforts:
“I pray you permit your humble wife to attend your lordship upon the
journey,” she said. “Who else is competent to travel at your side, my
lord?”
He did not answer her. He was looking out of an open shoji, and his face
in the moonlight seemed as if carved in marble, so set, so rigid,
immovable as that of one dead.
Ohano rose desperately to her feet. She felt unspeakably weak from the
excess of her inner passion. At that moment gladly would she have
exchanged places with the homeless and outcast wife of Saito Gonji, who
in the end was to come to that eternal bliss so rigorously denied to
Ohano.
She caught at her husband’s hand. He drew it up into his sleeve. There
had never been any caresses between them. Always he seemed rather to
shrink from contact with her.
“Lord, let us call a family council,” she cried, shrilly. “Let them
decide where is my proper place, Lord Saito Gonji. It is not for the
time of one life only that we marry. I have plighted my troth to you for
all time!”
Slowly he turned; and the deep, penetrating look scorched Ohano again.
“And I,” he said, “have plighted my troth with another.”
“Lord, it was dissolved,” she cried, breathlessly, “by the honorable
laws of our land. The Spider is now an outcast. Ah!”—her voice rose
shrilly on the verge of hysteria—“it is said—it is known—proved by those
who know—that now—now she is an inmate of the Yoshiwara. She—”
He had gripped her so savagely by the shoulder that she cried aloud in
pain. At her cry he threw her from him almost as if she had been some
unclean thing. She fell upon her knees, and upon them crept toward him,
stretching out her hands and beating them futilely together.
“My Lord Gonji! My husband! I am your honorable wife before all the
eight million gods of the heavens and the seas. It is impossible to
forsake me. I will not permit it. I will cling to your skirts and
proclaim my rights—ah, yes, to the very doors of Hades, if need be!”
He seemed not even to hear her. With his face thrust out like one who
dreams, he was recalling a vision. It was the face of Moonlight as he
had seen it last with that exalted, spiritual expression of
self-sacrifice and adoration upon it. _She_ an inmate of the cursed
Yoshiwara! The thought was grotesque, so horrible that a short laugh
came to his lips.
He strode by the agonized woman on the floor without a further word, and
sharply snapped the folding doors between them. This was their farewell.
As he passed down the street, on his way to join his regiment, he was
halted by the throngs pressing on all sides. The whole country seemed to
be abroad in the streets. The people marched about carrying banners, and
even the little children seemed to have caught the spirit of Yamato
Damashii (the Soul of Japan), and stammered their little banzais in
chorus. It was an inspiring sight, and he wandered about for some time,
with no particular purpose, unconscious where he was, in what direction
his feet carried him, following the throngs as they pushed along through
the streets.
Suddenly he came to where the lights were brighter; and the sounds of
revelry seemed to shriek at the very gates. Gonji paused, concentrating
his attention for the first time upon the place.
All at once it dawned upon him that he was before the gates of the
Yoshiwara! The words of Ohano seemed to ring in his ears. As if to shut
out their loud outcry, he covered his ears and sped like a madman down
the street. He swore to his very soul that it was an accursed lie Ohano
had uttered, and yet—
He stopped suddenly and threw a furtive, agonized glance toward the
infernal “city.” Then his head drooped down upon his breast and he
staggered toward the barracks like one who has been wounded mortally.
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