ON a day in the season of greatest heat, a few months after the going of
Lord Saito Gonji to the front, there staggered up the tortuous and
winding pathway, which climbed the mountain-side to where the House of
Slender Pines rested as on a cliff, a curious figure. She was garbed in
the conventional dress of the geisha, and the burning sun, beating down
upon the little figure, showed the gold of her wide obi and the
glittering vermilion of her kimono.
Something bound to the woman’s neck and back seemed to crush her almost
double beneath its weight, and she clung weakly to the stumps of tree
and bush as she made her way along.
It seemed almost, to the geishas sitting in the cool shade of the
pavilion, that she dragged herself along on her hands and knees.
One ceased strumming upon the samisen, and a dancer, idly illustrating a
few new gestures to the admiring apprentices, stopped in the middle of a
movement.
Omi suddenly screeched and caught at the sleeve of the dancer. No one
moved or spoke. They stood dumbfounded, staring with unbelieving eyes at
the Spider, as she crept up the last height and dropped in silent
exhaustion in their midst. There, with the glowing sun beating
mercilessly down upon her, entangled in her glimmering gown, she lay
like a great dead butterfly.
There was a stir among the geishas. Eyes met eyes in meaning, shocked
glances; but still, from custom, they were voiceless.
Suddenly the little Omi began to run about like one bereft of her
senses. One moment she knelt by her former mistress; the next she sought
to awaken the chaperon, shaking and pounding that enormously stout and
somnolent lady. Several maids now joined her, and they ran about in
panic-stricken circles, uncertain what to do. Matsuda was absent. The
poor, mindless Okusama was indoors, playing and talking with her
countless dolls, quite oblivious of all about her. Should they go to
her? Would she understand?
Omi finally darted into the house, and, dragging the Okusama from her
dolls, drew her out into the sunlight. For a moment the demented
creature stared with a puzzled, troubled look at the form upon the
ground. Then she began to utter strange little inarticulate cries and
threw herself upon the body of the Spider.
She seemed suddenly to regain all of her lost senses. She felt the
geisha’s hands, listened to her heart, screamed for water, and tore at
the object upon the Spider’s back, drawing it warmly to her own bosom.
One maiden brought water, another a parasol, another a fan, while Omi
supported Moonlight’s head upon her lap. One vied with the other in
performing some service for the one they all had loved.
Presently the heavy eyes of the Spider opened, and, dazedly, she
appeared to recognize the faces of those about her. A faint smile crept
to her white lips. But the smile quickly faded, and a piteous look of
commingled fear and pain stole over her wan little face. She put back
her hands to her neck and started up, moaning. Loving arms were about
her. They reassured her that all about her were friends, and showed her
her baby, where, safe and sweet, it rested in the bosom of the Okusama.
Then for a long time she lay with her eyes closed, a look of peace, such
as comes after a long, exhausting race, upon her face.
Later, when, refreshed and stronger, she rested among the geishas in the
pavilion, she weakly and somewhat incoherently told them the story of
her wanderings.
At first she had found employment under another name in a tea-house of
the city of Tokio; but it was not in the capacity of geisha, for she
knew the agents of her husband sought among all the houses of the two
cities for a geisha answering her description. Moreover, she had not the
heart nor the strength to follow her old employment. So she had worked
in the humble capacity of seamstress to a geisha-house in Tokio, near by
the very barracks where her husband daily went. Every day she had seen
him, unseen by him. She had even heard his inquiries of the master of
the house for one answering her description. But no one had thought of
the pale and shrinking little sewing woman, who so humbly served the
geishas, as the famous one they sought.
Then the war had caused business stagnation everywhere in Tokio, and the
first to suffer were the geishas. Patrons now were few, confined mostly
to members of the departing regiments.
Moonlight’s strength at this time had begun to fail her. Her work was
unsatisfactory. She was dismissed. Now, at this time, when it was too
late to please the Lord Saito Gonji and all his august ancestors, she
had made the astonishing discovery, which she had not known when with
him: that she was to become a mother!
Unable, even had she so desired, to return to the house of the Saitos,
scorning to accept even the smallest help from the family which had
divorced her, turned away from every place where she sought employment
because of her condition, she had been reduced to the direst necessity.
Indeed she, the once celebrated Spider, the wife of the noble Lord Saito
Gonji, had become a miserable mendicant, hovering on the outskirts of
the temples and the tea-houses, seeking, in the garb of her late
calling, now worn and tattered, as they saw, for pity and charity. After
long and tortuous wanderings, she had at last managed to return to
Kioto. She wandered out into the hills in search of the House of Slender
Pines.
In a secluded and quiet little corner of a seemingly deserted and
unexplored hill she had found at last a refuge in a diminutive temple,
where a lonely priestess expiated the sins of her youth by a life of
absolute solitude and piety. Here Moonlight’s child was born. Here she
might still have been, but the aged nun had finished her last penance
and had gone to join the ones the gods loved in Nirvana. The geisha had
set out again, in search of her former home, and now she bore her baby
on her back. Without funds to pay for a jinrikisha, she had traveled
entirely on foot. The journey had been long, the sun never so hot, but,
ah! the gods had guided her feet unerringly, and here at last she was in
their midst!
She looked at the Okusama, whispering to the little head against her
lips; at Omi, holding her hands in a strangling grasp and making violent
contortions of her face in an effort to keep back the tears; at the
geishas and maidens, with their pretty faces running over with tears.
Then she sighed and smiled.
The Okusama seemed to remember something of a sudden. She started upon
her knees, clapping her hands violently.
“Hurry, maidens!” she cried, shrilly. “The most honorable Spider
requires new apparel! Wait upon her quickly and excellently!”
Omi whirled around in a dizzy circle, and she danced every step of the
way to the house. Inside they heard her singing, and a moment later
berating and scolding the maid who was to wait upon her mistress.
------------------------------------------------------------------------