APRIL danced lightly over the land. Merrily she flung her rainbow
showers of sweetest water upon the earth, the trees, the fearsome grass
which March had coaxed in vain to do more than peep its head above the
soil. Now the land was covered with a mantle so soft and tender that its
young life seemed a thing that it were wanton to crush beneath the foot.
Early, early in the morning, before the birds and flowers had cocked up
their little heads to seize the first sun-kiss, a lover stood in a
garden all made of gently sloping hillocks, crowned with trees whitened,
as if frost-laden, with the full bloom of the cherry and plum. And the
lover’s voice called softly and tenderly to his lady’s casement:
“Lady Wistaria! My sweetest Wistaria!”
At first there was no response. Moving nearer the casement, he called
again:
“Sweetest, dearest one, will you not come to your window for a
minute—but a fraction of a minute?”
Softly a hand slid back the shoji—a slender, small, expressive hand of
perfect form and contour, and then a young girl’s face appeared at the
opening. Her eyes were very dark, and infinitely, intensely sad in
expression. Indeed, one might almost wonder whether their very
brightness was not caused by the dews of unshed tears. She was pale.
There was no color in her face at all, save that of her red lips.
So pale and ethereal she seemed to her rapturous lover that, for a
moment, he was filled with an eerie fear—was she mortal, or one of those
fragile spirits who abide on the earth for a season only? Then, all in a
moment, her eyes meeting those of her lover, the sadness of the night
passed from her like a shadow which is vanquished by the sunlight. An
instant later she was again pale.
“Speak to me at once,” implored the lover, “for but a moment since I
thought you a spirit. Dearest one, assure me that my passion is not in
vain, and that my eyes deceive me when they fancy that yours are sad.”
Her voice faltered and trembled at first. Gradually she steadied it.
“My honorable eyes,” she said, “are not always faithful mirrors of my
heart. Yes, indeed, you are deceived, my lord. Look again. Surely you
will see that—that they do smile.”
“Yes,” he replied, regarding her somewhat wistfully, “it is true. They
do smile, and yet—” He hesitated. “You do not appear happy, Fuji-wara.”
A strange little laugh escaped her lips. But she made no reply. She had
turned her eyes from his, staring out before her. As the trouble
deepened in the lover’s eyes, he reached up, touching very gently the
small white hand on the sill. The light touch of his hand startled her.
Before he could speak she had recovered herself, leaning farther over to
him. Her words sounded strangely harsh.
“My lord, do let us resume our conversation concerning this brave cause
to which you adhere.”
He flushed warmly.
“It seems incongruous,” he replied, after a moment, “that a tender
maiden should be interested in political conflicts.”
“That is very unkind, my lord. You do not credit me, then, with any
other quality, apparently, than that of pale softness. Indeed, my vanity
has saved me from the knowledge that the gods have been most unkind.”
“Nay, do not speak so,” he tenderly chid her. Of late he had chafed not
a little at her persistent waiving aside of all tenderer subjects to
discuss those of larger import to men alone.
“Well, then,” she persisted, “say that I am capricious, whimsical, what
you will. But do, pray, humor me, and if I find it necessary”—she
stammered over her words—“if I find it interesting to discuss such
matters, pray allow me to do so.”
“Do so, then, at once, dear one! I am all ears to listen and all tongue
to reply.”
“Pray tell me, then, are you truly an Imperialist at heart, or merely so
in name because you are a Mori?”
“Pray tell me where my insignificant sympathies should lie, and there I
swear to you shall they be.”
She protested that he but begged her question. Did he, then, consider,
because she was but a weak maiden, that her interest in such a matter
must needs be a slight thing? Was she not herself a daughter of a
samurai, and did not the flame, the fire of patriotism glow unceasingly
in her breast also?
“Dear Wistaria,” entreated the lover, “I pray you do not disturb your
gentle bosom with these questions which are meant for soldiers, not for
maidens.”
“Nay, then,” she replied, and there were tears in her voice now, “why
will you persist so? You are quite wrong, too. Let me repeat: I am the
daughter of a family whose women have had their honorable share in the
affairs of the nation.”
“True, but your house has stood always on one side only. They have never
deigned even to hear the argument, the pious, patriotic cry of the other
side.”
“My house! Well, my lord, and am I a house?”
He kissed the slender hand on the window ledge. It reached just to his
lips.
“Nay, I swear you are a goddess. It could not be possible that one so
good and fair would favor an evil cause.”
“Evil? Ah, then, my lord, is the cause of my house an evil one?”
He looked up into her eyes earnestly.
“I should be a traitor, my lady, did I take advantage of the friendly
hospitality your house has offered me to repay it by sowing seeds of
mischief.”
“But if the seeds were not mischievous, my lord? If they were worthy and
good?”
He dropped her hand abruptly, and paced for a time up and down the small
grass-grown walk beneath her window.
In the shadow of the room behind the Lady Wistaria another face appeared
for the space of a moment only. Long, lean, cadaverous it was, wherein
fierce eyes burned like living coals. With a shudder, Wistaria clutched
her hand over her heart. Back to her casement came the lover.
“My sweetest girl, do not let us discuss so melancholy a subject.”
Impatient to speak with her of other matters nearer his heart, the lover
let full, passionate appeal shine in his eyes. Wistaria’s paleness
deepened, if that were possible. Her eyes grew humid with repressed
sadness. Her voice trembled and broke in spite of her words.
“Melancholy, my lord? Nay, you would treat me as a child. You would turn
my heart from a lofty subject with the graceless remark that it is too
melancholy for me.”
“Lady, I would turn your heart to the holiest of all subjects on earth.”
“Ah, what is that, dear Keiki—No, no, no! Pray excuse my honorable
rudeness. Do, pray, my lord, rather perceive my intense curiosity in the
matter of which we have spoken. Then when you have enlightened me, speak
whatever you will, my lord. I will listen.”
“And concerning what am I to enlighten you?”
“The question which cuts our country into two bitter factions, each
defiant and warlike towards the other.”
Into the lover’s face there crept vague, baffled perplexity mirroring
the thought beyond. Coquetry, or desire for political truth—which swayed
his mistress? If the former, there was no combating it; if the latter,
then—why then he would speak her true. He said:
“Will you tell me, then, whom you have been taught to regard as the
ruler of Japan?”
“Why, our good Shogun Iyesada,” she returned, promptly.
“Yet he is not so regarded by every one in Japan.”
“Why is that?”
“Because there are many who would see our rightful sovereign, our divine
Emperor, upon the throne.”
“But, my lord, his Imperial Majesty is, indeed, already upon the throne,
is he not?”
“Only nominally. I fear, my lady, that you have not read the _Dai Nihon
Shi_ of the Prince of Mori?”
“No, but I am much interested in it.”
“The history,” continued the young man, with vehement bitterness, “was
purged repeatedly by the Yedo censor of the Shogun. It dared to speak
the truth to the people. I do assure you it was not destroyed, however,
before it had done its work well.”
“How? Pray do tell me all about it.”
“Have you never heard that pious—fanatical, if you will—cry, a barely
half-muffled war-cry now, ‘Daigi Heibunor!’” [the King and the subject].
His voice rose with a growing passion. Into his eyes leaped the gleam of
the patriot.
An exclamation escaped the lips of the young girl.
“Oh, my lord, do not speak so loudly. I would feign warn you. I—I—”
She broke off in her agitation. But her apparent fear for him only
filled her lover with a great joy. His voice softened.
“Fuji-wara, will you suffer yourself to listen hereafter to a confessed
traitor?”
“Dear lord, traitor to the wrong?”
“Oh, dearest girl, can it actually be that you sympathize with our noble
cause?”
“I—I—Tell me, do, pray tell me, with whom does the young Prince of Mori
sympathize?”
“Oh, the rascal is a descendant of the Mori of whom I spoke just now.”
“And an adherent to his views?”
“Possibly.”
“You do not know for a fact,” she urged, tremulously, “just to what
party the Prince does adhere?”
“My lady,” replied the lover, with some constraint, “the Prince has his
pride of caste. He is also not without the inherited germs of patriotism
in his soul.”
“And still they do say that he is as silly as a butterfly, and so given
to frivolity that his head can hold no serious thought.”
“I do assure you,” replied the other, flushing warmly, “that our prince
is not all he may seem.”
“My lord, I have conceived the most overwhelming interest in this young
Prince Mori.”
“Indeed!” The young man started back in humorous dismay. The girl smiled
now, a little, dreary smile.
“Be assured, my lord, that the interest is not of a sentimental nature.
But it would seem that the young Prince was surely born for a great
purpose.”
“Yes?” inquired the other, eagerly.
“And that is, to follow in the steps of his honorable ancestor.”
“Oh, dearest girl, you fill my soul with joy! I am ready to swear that
your sweet heart beats for the right—the noble cause to which—”
“The Prince Mori is sworn?” she interrupted, quickly.
“Ay! and all the patriotic sons of Japan!”
“And what do these sons of Japan propose to do? What are the plans of
the Prince Mori?”
“My lady!”
“Pray, why do you start so, Keiki-sama?”
“You ask a weighty question with the same lightness you would bestow if
inquiring about the weather!”
“Then the tones of my voice do me injustice.”
“Wistaria, I swear I will not speak another word on this subject. No—not
even to you.”
“But—”
“No, no. I swear I will not.”
“My lord—”
“Did I arise an hour before the sun, think you, to preach politics to my
mistress?”
“You recall the hour to me now. It seems I must bid you farewell. My
maid even now is tapping on my door. Do, pray then, depart.”
The young man appeared cut to the heart at the parting. He sighed so
deeply that Wistaria could not bear to gaze upon him, and, conscious of
the impatient presence within, she drew her windows back hastily and
shut out the sight of her lover from her. Then she faced her father
within.
“You have heard all, honored parent?”
“Everything.”
“You are a witness of my continued efforts. I fear we have learned all
there is to know.”
“Your opinion was not asked,” replied the father, coldly. “Your services
are all I require. You will resume them to-morrow.”
The Lady Wistaria prostrated herself before her parent with the utmost
humility.
“I am prepared to obey your august will in all things,” she murmured, in
the most filial and submissive of voices.
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[Illustration: Decoration]
X
THE aged castle moat was darkly melancholy, though its banks on either
side were beautiful with the damp grass and the meeting willow and
wistaria. Cold, still, and deep were its waters. At night it seemed
grewsome and uncanny, perhaps because of the tragedy of its history,
which every Catzu courtier knew. Even in the bright sunlight its beauty
was seductively sad, for its dark waters were covered with white lotus,
mingled with red and purple, with golden hearts, whose little cups each
held one drop of dew—a glistening tear.
Wandering dejectedly along the banks of the old moat, Keiki vainly
sought in his mind for some clew to the phenomenal change in his
mistress. Though at times her eyes seemed drowned in tears of
tenderness, more often they were coldly glassy. Her conversation, too,
was spasmodic, devoid of all endearment, and of a sort alien to lovers.
When he had first seen her after the illness which had kept her from his
sight for some days, he had lost all self-control in the joy of
beholding her once more. In ardent imagination he revived the memory of
those dream-days on the little rock island of the twenty geishas, but
though she appeared to have recovered her health, she no longer
accompanied him upon such excursions. Indeed, she was rarely seen in the
Catzu palace, except on the formal occasions of the guest-room. Keiki
had been forced to content himself with those early morning meetings at
her casement, so brief, so unsatisfactory. For she no longer murmured
shy words of love and happiness. She talked, instead, of ridiculous
matters, the politics of the country!
Nevertheless, through her apparent sympathy for this cause so close to
the heart of the young man, she had revivified those thrills of
patriotism which, for the nonce, he had pushed aside to devote all his
heart and mind to the sweeter employment of loving.
In a moment of enthusiasm, only two days before, he had confided to her
the far-reaching plans of the Mori princes for their country. She had
begged him with tears in her eyes to tell her of them; then, before he
had half finished, she had entreated him wildly to tell her no more, and
the next instant, piteously, tremblingly, begged him to continue. And
then as he went on she had dropped her head upon her arms and buried her
face from his sight. Her emotion had thrilled him. At the moment he
could have fallen on his knees, beseeching her to do something to hasten
their marriage so that he might return to Choshui to do his part in this
noble cause. Before he could speak, however, she had raised her face and
gazed for a moment upon him with such an expression of penetrating agony
and appeal that he had sprung towards her, hastily crying out her name,
“Wistaria! Wistaria!”
A moment later she was gone. The following morning he had waited in vain
in the garden beneath her casement. Over and over again he had tapped
upon her shutters and called her name, but there was no response. He had
met with the same experience this morning. Keiki was very miserable.
Since the change in her seemed inexplicable, his confidence was
shaken—not his confidence in her faith or truthfulness, but in her love.
He began to torture his mind with the possibility that she might not
love him, that she had been but a girl, after all, who, flattered by his
manner of wooing her, had thought she returned his affection. His faith
in her purity of soul was so perfect that no slightest thought of any
designs upon his political schemes ever occurred to him in connection
with Wistaria.
Thus unhappy, worried, and very much in love, Keiki walked moodily along
the bank of the old castle moat, his old assurance and egotism
completely gone from him.
Suddenly as he strolled along something struck him sharply on the
temple. Stooping, he raised from the ground what seemed to be a soft
pebble. Examining it more closely, however, he perceived it to be a
lady’s fine paper handkerchief rolled into a little ball. Half
wonderingly, half idly, Keiki undid it. A faint, familiar perfume exuded
from it as he shook it out. In an instant he was pressing it rapturously
to his face. It was from Wistaria. Tenderly turning it about and
enjoying its sweetness, he found as he was smoothing it out a little
word in the centre:
“Go.”
The lover became pale as death. He read it again, then repeated it
aloud—“Go!” Its meaning was plain. He did not doubt for an instant from
whom it came. That one little word from her explained everything—the
change in her, her realization that she did not love him, and this
silent means of telling him the truth. He crumpled the handkerchief in
his hand. A moment later he was pacing—almost running—up and down along
the bank of the silent, mocking moat. He could not think. He could only
feel. Then he threw himself prone upon the ground, his face buried in
the long grasses. He was smothering and choking back the hoarse,
terrible sobs of a man—one who had been trained in the inflexible school
of the samurai.
The day passed over his head. The sky, ruddy with the setting sun, paled
gradually, until it seemed as though a veil were drawn softly across it.
Still Keiki gave himself up to his despair. For him it seemed that the
sun had gone out, life had ceased.
As the shadows continued to spread their batlike wings over the heavens,
darkening, darkening the skies, until only an impenetrable vault of
darkness dotted with myriad magic lights was above and about him, he
still lay there.
A rustle disturbed the grass. Possibly a hare running by. Keiki heeded
it not. Something was stirring, moving near him. Mechanically, dully, he
listened. Some one had lost his way among the willows and with his hands
was feeling his way. From his own despair Keiki was recalled by the
sudden acute knowledge of possible danger to this person who had
evidently lost his way. One false step towards the boggy grass, and
beyond was the treacherous moat, whose water-flowers and reeds hid its
dark surface. Suddenly he sprang to his feet and called out hoarsely:
“Who is the honorable one?”
He fancied he heard a cry. He ran towards it, then stopped short. He had
come upon her there in the willows. Her kimono shone out startlingly
white with a stray moon-beam upon it, but her gown was not less white
than her face, which stared into the darkness like that of a statue.
Slowly he went to her as though drawn by subtle, compelling hands. Close
to her, almost touching her; he did not speak, because he could not.
Bitter words had sprung to his lips only to die before birth. He
perceived that she was trembling from head to foot. Her hands stood out
from her sleeves, each finger apart, and they trembled, quivered, shook.
With an inarticulate cry he caught them in his own, inclosing them
warmly, almost savagely, in his grasp. Then his voice came to him. It
was very husky and strange.
“Speak!”
“Go!—Go!”
This was all she whisperingly cried. She kept repeating it over and over
between her chattering teeth. As he wound his arms about her shivering
form he found that she was dripping wet. Could it be that she had fallen
into the moat? By what miracle of the gods, then, had she been saved?
The dark waters were so deep—so deep!
“You are wet and cold! You have met with an accident?”
“No, no,” she said. “It was the honorable grass—so wet—so cold, like a
lake. I crawled through it, on my hands and knees, close to the moat.”
“But why did you do it, why did you do it?” His voice was imploring.
“To come to you. To be with you—to—”
He clasped her closer, warmed to the soul by her words.
“Ah, then it is not true,” he cried, “and you do still love me,
Fuji-wara?”
“Better than my soul. Better than my duty to the gods,” she whispered.
The sound of her voice was muffled. Her words literally sighed through
her lips. He could not comprehend; he knew only that she loved him, had
come to him, and now she was all water-wet, pale-eyed, and trembling as
one who sleeps with fear. And because that strange voice hurt his soul,
he covered her lips with his hand. She made no remonstrance, but sank
into his arms, almost as if she had fainted. But looking down he saw her
eyes were wide open, shining like dark stars. They startled him. They
were like those of a dead woman. He shook her almost roughly in his
fright.
“Wistaria! Speak to me! What is it? Tell me your trouble.”
“Trouble?” she repeated, dazedly. “Trouble!”
Then she remembered. She grasped his arm till her fingers almost pierced
through the silk into his flesh.
“You must go—go! Go quickly—run all the way. Do not stop one moment—not
one little moment.”
“Go away? Run? What are you saying?”
“Listen! In a moment, perhaps, I may not have power to speak. My
strength is failing me. I thought you would obey the word I sent you.
But I saw you fall down among the grasses, and all day long I have
watched from my window, waiting, waiting, waiting to see you depart. No,
no—listen unto me—do not speak. I escaped the vigilance of my jailers—my
executioners. Oh, will you not understand? I have come through perils
you cannot imagine to warn you—to beg you on my knees to go away at
once. Hasten to Choshui!”
Her breath failed her. She had been speaking quickly, in sharp gasps.
“But I do not understand,” he said.
“Your prince—your august prince is in danger!”
“What?”
“The Prince of—the young Prince Keiki,” she gasped.
“The young Prince Keiki!” he repeated, incredulously.
“Yes, yes; they have discovered his secrets—they will arrest him for
treason and—”
He almost shouted.
“His secrets! The cause! Oh, all the gods!”
“You can save him. There may be time. They will take him and cast him
into a dungeon and kill him!”
“I must set off at once,” excitedly he muttered. “What could have
happened in my absence?”
Her shivering, trembling presence recalled him. He was distracted at the
thought of leaving her. He could think of nothing else. He tried to see
her white face in the darkness, but could only trace the pale outlines.
Suddenly he took it in his hands.
“Fuji-wara,” he whispered, in a voice of mingled love and agony. “How
can I leave you? How can I do so? And yet you would not have me act the
part of a coward, the false traitor. You would be the first to bid me
go.”
“Go, go!” she cried, releasing herself from his hands feverishly.
“And you?”
“Lead me back into the path. I shall find my way from there.”
Leading her, he questioned anxiously:
“There is danger for you here, Wistaria? Tell me, or I shall not
depart.”
She turned the question.
“Last night there was a slight earthquake in the province. There is
always danger. But you and I have pledged each other. For the time of
this life and the next, and as many after as may come, I will be your
flower-wife and you my husband.”
At parting he kissed the hem of her kimono and the little, water-soaked
foot beneath.
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[Illustration: Decoration]