THE Lady Wistaria arose with the sun. Without waiting to pin back the
long, silken hair which hung like a cloud of lacquer about her, she
stole softly to the casement of her chamber.
The perfume which stole up to her was sweeter and stronger far than that
wafted from the trees laden with the dews of the early morning. Yet the
trees were bare of blossoms and would not bloom for a month to come.
Nevertheless the ledge of Wistaria’s casement was piled with the living
spring blossoms of plum and cherry. She could not but caress them with
her hands, her lips, her eyes, her burning cheeks. With little,
trembling hands she searched among them and found what she sought—a
scroll—a narrow, thin, wonderful scroll, long, yet only a few inches in
width, with golden borders down the sides, and the faint, exquisite
tracings of birds and flowers intertwined among the words that leaped up
at her almost as though they had spoken. It was a poem to her—her grace,
beauty, modesty, loveliness, its theme:
“A stately shiro was her home;
In royal halls she shone most fair,
From tiny feet to golden comb,
In her sweet life what is my share?
“Oh, lovely maid, my moon thou art;
O Fuji san, thou hast my heart!”
There were many other verses, but the Lady Wistaria was too much moved
to have either the vision or the mind to read beyond the first stanza.
As became her rank and the painful tuition of years, she should have
pushed very deliberately the flowers from her sill and torn the scroll
into ragged pieces, a chastisement prescribed by every etiquette for the
temerity of a presumptuous lover.
But the Lady Wistaria did nothing of the sort. She gathered the flowers
tenderly and took them in. Then she came back to the casement, and,
leaning far out, gazed with piercing wistfulness out into the little
garden below. For some minutes she waited, the patience of her caste
fading away gradually into that of the impatience of her sex.
A voice beneath her casement! She leaned farther over. A young man’s
eager, glowing face smiled up at her like the rising sun. Again the Lady
Wistaria forgot the training of years. Her trembling voice floated down
to him:
“Pray you do consider the perils in which you place yourself,” she
implored.
“I would pass through all the perils of hell so I might reach you in the
end,” he fervidly whispered back.
“Oh, my lord, look yonder! See, the sun is pushing its way upward above
the mountains and the hill-tops. Do you not know that soon my uncle’s
guards will pass this way?”
“Under the heavens there is nothing in all this wide world worthy as a
gift for you, dear lady. That you have deigned to accept my honorable
flowers and my abominably constructed poem has given me such strength
that I am prepared to fight a whole army of guards. Ay! And to give up
readily, too, my life.”
“And if you love me,” she replied, “you will guard with all your
strength that life which you are so recklessly exposing to danger.”
“Ah, sweetest lady, can it be true then that you condescend to take some
concern in my insignificant existence?”
She made no response other than to pluck from the climbing vine about
her casement one little half-blown leaf and drop it at his feet.
As he stooped to pick up the leaf a form interposed itself, and a
half-grown man looked him steadily in the face. With a little cry the
Lady Wistaria vanished from her casement.
Meanwhile the intruder, instead of being the aggressor, was defending
himself against the flashing blade of the infuriated lover. Too proud to
call for aid, the youth opposed to the lover found himself outmatched
before the skill and fire of the other. So thinking caution better than
valor, he flung his sword at the feet of the lover. The latter, picking
it up by the middle, returned it to his opponent with a low bow of
utmost grace. Then with one hand on his hip and the other holding his
sword, he addressed the youth.
“Thy name?”
“Catzu Toro. And thine?”
“Too insignificant to be spoken before one who bears so great a name as
thine,” returned the other, bowing with satirical grace.
“How is that?” cried Catzu Toro—“insignificant? What, one in thy garb
and with thy skill of swordsmanship?”
The victorious one, shrugging his shoulders imperceptibly, again bowed
with a smile of disclaimer.
“May I be permitted,” he said, “to put one question to you, my lord, and
then I am perfectly prepared to give myself up to your father’s guards,
though not, I promise you, without a struggle, which I doubt not your
vassals will long remember.” And he blithely bent the blade of his sword
with his two hands.
“Nay, then,” cried the youth, impetuously, “You do me injustice. I am
ready to swear protection to one who has acted so bravely as thou. But a
question for a question, is not that fair?”
“Assuredly.”
“Very well, then. You serve the Prince of Mori?”
“In a very humble capacity,” returned the other, guardedly.
“In what capacity?” inquired the young Toro, quickly.
“Ah, that is two questions, and you have not even deigned to listen to
my one.”
“Speak,” said the youth, curbing his curiosity and impatience.
“The Lady Wistaria—she is your sister?”
“My cousin,” answered the other, briefly.
“Will you tell me how it is possible for one unfortunately attached to
an unfriendly clan to pay court to your cousin?”
“Two questions, that!” exclaimed Toro, promptly, whereat they both
laughed, their friendship growing in proportion to their good-humor.
“Now,” said Toro, “I will answer whatever questions you may put to me,
if you in return will only satisfy my mind concerning certain matters
which I am perishing to know.”
“A fair exchange! Good!”
“Then,” said Toro, unloosening his own cape from his hips, “pray throw
this about you, for I fear you will be observed by my father’s samurai.
Even my presence,” he added, with a sigh, “could hardly protect you, for
I, alas! am under age.”
“Is it possible?” said the stranger, with such affected surprise that
the boy flushed with delight.
“Now, my lord”—he hesitated, doubtfully, as though hoping the other
would supply the name—“now, my lord, let me explain to you why I truly
sympathize with you in your love for one who must seem impossible.”
“Not impossible,” corrected the lover, softly, thinking tenderly of the
Lady Wistaria’s fears for him.
“I, too,” confessed Toro, “am in the same plight.”
“What!” cried the lover, in dismay; “you also adore the lady?”
“No,” replied Toro, shaking his head with sad melancholy; “but I have
conceived the most hopeless attachment for a lady whom I may never dream
of winning.”
“Then I am much mistaken in you. I thought, my lord, that you were not
only a brave man, but a daring knight.”
“But you cannot conceive of the extremity of my case,” cried the youth,
piteously, “for consider: the lady I love not only belongs to our rival
clan, but is already betrothed.”
“Well, but betrothals have been broken before, my lord, and the days of
romance and adventure are not altogether dead in the land.”
“Ah, yes, that is true, but my rival is not only more powerful, but in
every respect more prepossessing and attractive.”
“Indeed? Well, all this interests me very much. Still, I must say, my
lord, that though I am in the service of the Mori, I have not seen the
knight or courtier who could prove so formidable a rival to you, either
in graces or rank—for are you not the son of the great lord of this
province?”
“And has not our neighboring lord a son also?”
“Wh—what!” cried the stranger, darting backward as though the youth had
dealt him a sharp and unexpected blow; then scanning the other’s face
closely, “You do not mean—the Prince—?”
“Yes—the Prince Keiki. That swaggering, bragging, noisy roustabout, who
bears so many cognomens.”
“Hum!” said the other. “They call him the Prince Kei—, truly—”
“Yes,” said the youth, jealously, “and also ‘Hikal-Keiki-no-Kimi’ (the
Shining Prince Keiki).”
“You have told me strange news indeed,” said the Mori courtier. “I did
not know of the betrothal of our Prince. It is very sad, truly.”
“Sad! To be betrothed to the Princess Hollyhock sad?”
“For you, my lord,” replied the other, with a slight smile.
Toro doubled his hands spasmodically as he frowned with the fierceness
of a samurai, that the other might not observe the soft moisture of a
woman in his eyes.
“Now let me tell you a secret,” said the stranger, touching his arm with
confidential sympathy. “Upon my word, the Princess Hollyhock is not
betrothed to the Prince Keiki.”
“My lord, you do not say so! Are you sure?”
“As sure as I am that I am here now.”
“Oh, the gods themselves must have sent you hither!” cried the youth.
“Will you not accept my protection and constant aid in your suit for my
cousin?”
“You are more generous than—”
“Your Prince, you would say,” interrupted Toro, bitterly.
“—than the gods, I was about to remark,” said the other, gravely. “Now
let us form a compact. You on your side will promise me protection and
aid here on your estates, and I will swear to you that you shall win and
wed the Princess Hollyhock.”
“I have a small house yonder, my lord,” cried the impulsive youth,
excitedly. “It is kept by my old nurse. Come you with me thither. I
shall lend you whatever clothes you may require and you shall remain
here as long as you wish. I will introduce you to my family as a
friend—a student from my own university in Kummommotta. Then you can
make suit to Wistaria, and, having once wed her, who can separate you,
let me ask?”
“Not the gods themselves, I swear!” cried the other.
“And your name—what shall I call you?”
The courtier hesitated for the first time.
“My name is insignificant. It is a Mori name, and therefore dangerous in
your province.”
“You must assume another, then.”
“Hum! Well, what would you suggest, my lord?”
“How will Shioshio Shawtaro do?”
“Not at all. It has a trading sound.”
“Ho! ho! How about Taketomi Tokioshi?”
“Too imperious.”
“Fujita Gemba?”
“No, no.”
“Then do you choose yourself.”
“My lord, waiving aside all our political differences, do you not think
it would be loyal for me to take the name of one of my own people?”
“What, a Mori name? You are very droll, my lord. Why not keep your own
name, then?”
“Ah, but it is not the Mori family name I wish to assume, but a
surname.”
“It might be dangerous.”
“Oh, not without the family name and title attached. Suppose I take the
name of Keiki?”
“What! The name of my rival!”
“My prince, my lord,” said the other, bowing deeply.
“Nevertheless my rival.”
“Not at all; and if he were so, why not grant him this little honor,
seeing you are to worst him in the suit for the lady?”
“That is true.”
“The name will sound vastly different with another family name attached.
Suppose I assume the name of Tominaga Keiki? That is somewhat different
from Mori Keiki, is it not?”
“Somewhat.”
“Then Keiki is my name.”
“Kei—Very well. Let it be so.”
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[Illustration: Decoration]
V
THE Lord of Catzu received his son’s friend with hospitality dictated by
his fat and good-humored nature, beseeching him to consider the Catzu
possessions as his own. Keiki (as he had called himself), on fire to
make use of the advantage he had now gained at the outset, was met by
two unexpected obstacles.
In the first place, the Lady Wistaria was hedged about by an almost
insurmountable wall of etiquette and form. Though the lover blessed all
the gods for the privilege of being in her presence each day, yet,
impetuous, warm-blooded, and ardent, he could not but chafe at the
distance and the silence which seemed impassable between them.
Wistaria, he thought, might just as well have been a twinkling star in
the heavens above him as to be placed at one end of the guest-room, her
lips sealed in maidenly silence, while at the other end, in the place of
honor, must sit he, the august guest, inwardly the burning lover.
Between them interposed her honorable relatives and certain members of
her uncle’s household, separating the lovers with their extravagant
politeness and words of gracious compliment and hospitality.
In the second place, the pilot upon whom he had relied for safe conduct
through the icy forms which kept him from his mistress had deserted him
perfidiously. Toro, the reckless and foolhardy, his imagination fed by
the daring and sang-froid of the Mori clansman, his own heart aflame
with as deep a passion as his friend’s, had borrowed his dress and
departed for Choshui, there to risk all chance of danger with the
bravery, but without, alas! the wit, of the Mori courtier.
To offset these two hardships, the lovers saw a gift sent by the gods in
the indisposition of the Lady Evening Glory. After the long and tedious
journey from the capital, the lady, who was of a delicate constitution,
retired to her apartments with a malady of the head and tooth. In point
of fact, the Lady Evening Glory suffered from neuralgia. The lovers
prayed that her illness might be long and lingering, though Wistaria,
having besought her to keep to her bed as long as possible that relapse
might be avoided, tempered her prayer with a petition to her favorite
god that her aunt’s illness might be unattended with pain.
With the Lady Evening Glory, the vigilant mentor of Wistaria, safely out
of the way, the girl found no cause for despair. This was the reason she
returned her lover’s pleading and ofttimes reproachful glances with
smiles, which, but for the joy of seeing them, he would have thought
heartless. The joy of Wistaria’s smile almost compensated for the pain
of her lover’s poignant surmise that her heart had no pity for the woes
of her adorer.
And, indeed, at this time there was little else in the girl’s heart save
a singing joy, a rippling flutter of new emotions and thrills, which
she, too innocent as yet to recognize their full import, cared only to
welcome with delight, to encourage, to foster and enjoy to the
uttermost.
Between Wistaria and her uncle there was utmost confidence and love. The
young girl occupied that place in his heart which would have been held
by the daughter denied him by the gods. The mantling flush, the
ever-shining eyes, now bright with joy that would overflow, now moist
with the unbidden tears that spring to the eyes when the heart is
disturbed with an emotion more sweet than expression; these—the change
which young love alone can produce in a maiden—he was quick to perceive.
The Lord Catzu’s own marriage had been most romantic, and if his lady
had lived down frigidly to the world, her husband at least had retained
his sentimental remembrance of the adventurous escapades attending it.
Such were the opportunities of life to the daimio of a province at peace
that, to all outward appearances, Catzu was too indolent, too
listlessly, luxuriously lazy and preoccupied with his own pleasures to
observe his niece’s condition of heart. But the Lord Catzu, with all his
placidity, was astute. Beneath his lazy eyelids his own small eyes
missed little that passed before him.
In fact, it was not long before he became aware of the attachment
between the young people. The courtier, he knew, bore an assumed name,
for Toro had labored with awkwardness when he endeavored to invent a
lineage for the friend whose appearance at the Catzu palace without the
customary retinue of servants or retainers had convinced its lord that
he had discovered a tinge of that delightful mystery which but added to
the favor of the unknown in the eyes of the sentimental Lord of Catzu.
In addition, it was the mode for young nobles of the realm to undertake
courtship over an assumed name, so that an air of romance might be lent
to their love affair. As to the young man’s rank there could be no
question, since his manners and breeding, his grace of person and charm
of speech, were caste characteristic. Looking secretly with high favor
upon the young man, Catzu considered how he might aid the lovers.
Slothful and deliberate in all he undertook, Catzu might provoke
impatience, but his gradual accomplishment of his ends was gratifying.
Just as he took his time in the serious business of life, so was he
leisurely in the pursuit of his pleasures. As a consequence the lovers
for a time were kept in an agony of waiting and suspense.
Keiki, maddened and irritated by the constant presence of the smiling
Lord Catzu, who in his opinion stood between him and his heart’s desire,
once more fell to writing imploring letters and poems to the Lady
Wistaria which made up in epithets of endearment what they lacked in
rhetoric. He prayed her to find some means by which he might be with her
alone, if only for a fraction of a minute. The one word “Patience,”
written upon a little china plate, so minutely that he could scarcely
decipher it, was the reply brought by the Lord Catzu, with the
information that the Lady Wistaria herself had painted the plate for
their august guest.
Meanwhile Catzu, cognizant of every sigh, every appealing expression,
every significant motion, laid his plans carefully for the impatient
suitor’s happiness. Certainly within the walls of the palace itself
there was no hope of solitude for the lovers. Pretexts for out-door
pleasure-parties were never wanting in the warmer season. Local fêtes,
the birth of each new flower, family events—all these were sufficient
invitation in themselves for such convivial parties as delighted the
soul of the Lord of Catzu, and could not have failed in their chance
opportunity for dual solitude.
At this time of the year, alas! there was neither snow nor moon nor
flowers to serve a pretext. A series of heavy rainfalls, most
distressing and persistent, was the only fugitive before approaching
spring. Yet even the rain-gods have a limit to their tears, and, after
all, the rains preceding the first month of spring are ofttimes the very
means by which the land is cleansed ere it bursts into beauty and bud.
Not so interminable as it seemed to them was the lovers’ waiting. Three
short days—yet how long!—and then the sun which had struggled for
ascendency over the troubled heavens rose up proudly triumphant. The
thunders retreated into tremulous growls of defeat; the gray-black
clouds rolled away before the blinding flashes of the sun-rays, flitting
like ghosts before the dawn. An immense rainbow, spanning the entire
heavens, sprang out of the skies, a signal of the sun-god’s victory.
What mattered it that the land was barren as yet of flowers? The grass
was green and the trees almost bursting in effort of emulation. Catzu,
having satisfied himself that the moisture on the grass was but the dew
of spring, forthwith devised a small party. It consisted of his lady
niece and the august guest of the household, who was graciously
entreated to accompany them, and who accepted with an alacrity almost
lacking courtesy.
With but two attendants, the party set out from the palace. Taking a
small boat, they made a swift pilgrimage up the graceful river to a
small island where a picturesque tea-house and gardens, with twenty
charming geishas, made a fairyland for lovers.
To receive so early and unheralded a visit from the august lord of the
province threw the geishas into a delighted panic of excitement. Their
attendants were seen rushing hither and thither throughout the place,
hastily making it suitable for the reception of the exalted guests.
Hastening down to the beach, the chief geisha herself apologized for the
island’s condition. The Lord of Catzu went to meet her. For his guest to
be received without preparation, he explained to Keiki, would be
unfitting. Consequently he begged him to remain on the beach, while he
himself proceeded with the chief geisha to the tea-house to issue
instructions.
The stolid and indifferent lackeys who had attended the party returned
to the boat, where they fell into conversation with the oarsmen.
At last the lovers were alone.
For a long moment Keiki and Wistaria looked into each other’s eyes. They
were safe from all observation, for the gardens, and indeed the whole
island, was of that rock-and-pebble-built variety favored by the
Japanese. Behind and around them they were screened by quaint, grotesque
rocks of natural form and immense size, carried from a mountain to this
tiny island, placed there in miniature to simulate nature.
Nevertheless Keiki, the impatient and ardent, now at the crucial moment,
had naught to say. He had confessed his love in his letters; she had
admitted tacitly her own. Still they did not embrace, or even touch each
other. Culture is strong in Japan, where also is the fire of love. So
these two but looked into each other’s faces, all their hearts’ eloquent
passion in their eyes. Wistaria’s eyes did not fall before his tender
gaze. Only a rose-red flush crept softly like a magic glow over the oval
of her cheeks, tingeing her little chin while accentuating her brow’s
whiteness.
Without a word her lover dropped upon one knee, lifted the long sleeve
of her kimono, and buried his face within its fabric.
Five minutes later, hand in hand, they were standing on the same spot.
They were watching the river, swollen by recent rains, as it burst over
the rocks beyond, bounding down the river-bed, rolling swiftly along,
twisting, curving, and winding about the sinuous form of the island’s
shore, holding it in the grudging love of the water for the land. The
water was blue-green in color, save where the sunbeams reflected its own
light in glistening gleams of quicksilver, ever moving, ever playing,
while the shores on either side threw shadows of their trees and rocks
upon it. As it ran busily, merrily along, now and then lapping the shore
and leaping to their very feet, it seemed a living thing which babbled
and laughed with an inward knowledge of their joy, and also sighed and
wailed with a prophetic undercurrent of coming woe.
The touch of their hands close clasped together made them tremble and
quiver. Their eyes met to droop away and meet again in the vivid
recognition of their own innocent happiness. They could not speak,
because their hearts had laid claim to their lips and sealed them in a
golden silence.
Then, after a long interval, Keiki found his voice. If he spoke of the
flowing river at their feet, it was not the river itself that absorbed
his mind, but because in it, as in all things beautiful in life, he now
saw reflected the image of his beloved.
“The honorable river,” he said, “flows high at this season, but before
the summer dies it will be but a thin line, very still, very quiet.”
“Yes,” said Wistaria, tremulously, “but the lotus will spring up in its
honorable waters, and if the river should continue to rise and rush
onward like this, I fear me the water-flowers would perish and the noise
of its ceaseless flow would drown the voices of the birds, which make
the summer speak.”
“That is true,” said Keiki, “but when the summer passes then the flowers
must still die, and we may no longer hear the singing of the birds. Then
still the river will be silent and motionless—perhaps dead.”
Keiki sighed with the moodiness of love attained. A gentle depression
stole from him to the Lady Wistaria.
“Alas! my lord,” she murmured; “it is so with all things in life that
are beautiful. They vanish and die like the flowers of summer.”
“Then,” said Keiki, “swear by the god of the sea, by whose waters we now
stand, that our love shall never die, and that for the time of this
life, and the next, and as many after as may come, you will be my flower
wife, and take me for your husband.”
“By all the eight million gods of heaven, and by the god of the sea, I
swear,” said Wistaria.
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[Illustration: Decoration]