THE Lady Wistaria was carried to her father’s home at night. There was
no gorgeous cortège, no gayly bedecked attendants or retainers to bend
the back and knee to her. She travelled alone, in a covered palanquin
borne on the shoulders of hired runners, beside whom the tall, lank
figure of her father strode. They set her down in the heart of the city,
the rest of the journey being made on foot. When she had last visited
her father’s home he had carried her on his back, after he had dismissed
the palanquin, for she was then but a small girl of ten. Now she walked
silently, dumbly, by his side. As they reached and passed through the
silent little village that had impressed her as a child, strange fancies
flitted in and out of Wistaria’s mind. There was none of that strange
up-leaping of the heart, experienced on returning to a home not seen for
years. The old mystic horror and fear of the place had taken possession
of Wistaria, but now, with a woman’s wide-open eyes, her wonder and fear
began to form themselves into vague fancies.
Slowly passing along the silent, spiral streets, climbing up and around
hillock after hillock, they came finally before the small, whitewashed
house with its dark, empty, cold interior. The old, old woman who had
fondled and sung to the child Wistaria came hobbling and mumbling to the
door. She wept over Wistaria’s hands, caressed them, and drew her head
to her bosom with a crooning laugh that was almost a sob.
“I am very weary and would fain retire at once,” said Wistaria, as she
returned the old woman’s caress.
Madame Mume attended Wistaria tenderly towards the stairway which led to
the upper part of the house. But, as she did so, Shimadzu called to his
daughter in his hollow voice of command.
“Stay,” he said. “I have much to say to you to-night.”
Bowing obediently, if wearily, to her father, Wistaria handed her cape
to the old woman and mechanically followed him into the ozashiki.
“My daughter,” began the father, “do you know where you now are?”
This strange question surprised Wistaria, but she replied, with a gentle
smile:
“In my honorable father’s house.”
“That is true, but do you know where your father’s house is situated?”
“No.”
“Very well; I will tell you, then. My house, though seemingly apart,
because of its situation on the hill, is built in the heart of an Eta
settlement.”
“Eta?” repeated Wistaria, mechanically. She had heard the word somewhere
before, but just what it signified her mind at the moment could not
recall. So she repeated the word again, as though it troubled yet
fascinated her. “Eta!—Eta!”
“Eta,” repeated her father. “In other words, the social outcast, the
despised pariah class of Japan.”
Then silence fell like a swift, blank darkness upon them. Wistaria
trembled with a creeping horror she could not fathom or grasp.
Somewhere, somehow, vaguely, dimly, she had heard of this class of
people. Perhaps it was at school. Perhaps her aunt had instructed her in
their condition. One thing was certain, she was suddenly made aware of
just what the one word Eta signified.
It described a class in Japan upon whom the ban of ostracism and
isolation had been placed by an inviolate heritage and a cruel custom.
So virulent and bitter was the prejudice against them and the contempt
in which they were held, that in the enumerations of the population they
were omitted from the count and numbered as cattle.
Herded in separate villages, their existence ignored by the communities,
none but the most degraded tasks were assigned to them—that of burying
criminals, slaughtering cattle, that of the hangman and public
executioner.
Whence they had come, why they were held in the contempt of all other
citizens, what their origin, none could tell. When had there been a time
in the history of the nation that they did not exist? Some old histories
aver that they were originally captives from the great Armada of the
Tartar invaders who dreamed of conquering the sacred realm. Others
declare that they were the descendants of the public executioners from
time immemorial; and again, more recent students assert that they were
descendants of the family and retainers of Taira-No-Masakado-Heishimo,
the only man in Japan who ever seriously conspired to seize the imperial
throne by armed force. Whatever their origin, they were the outcast
people of the realm. They were not permitted to mingle with or marry
outside of their own class, and any one who chose to marry among them
must either suffer the penalty of death or become one of them.
The long silence which ensued after Shimadzu had spoken the word Eta was
broken by the Lady Wistaria.
“And why,” she asked, with a tremor she could not keep from her
voice—“why does my honorable father make his home among this outcast
people?”
“Because,” quickly came the passionate response, “your honorable father
is an Eta, as is also my lady his daughter.”
Wistaria’s eyes, wide with shocked surprise, stared mutely up into her
father’s face. What! she—the Lady Wistaria, the dainty, cultivated,
carefully guarded and nurtured lady—an Eta girl! Her mind could not
grasp, would not hold the thought.
“Listen,” said her father, slowly. “I was born in a city of the south,
the seat of a daimio of eight hundred thousand koku. My father’s house
stood within the outer fortifications surrounding this prince’s castle.
I was trained in the school of the samurai. I grew up, honoring and
swearing by this prince. When I became of age I entered his service. No
love of man for woman was more persistent than my loyalty to his cause.
Devotion to him was my highest ideal.
“My prince had a bitter rival and enemy. He was a good and powerful
lord, though a Shogun favorite. This lord loved my sister and was loved
by her. In an evil moment I listened to her entreaties, and forgot my
allegiance to my prince in so far as to assist his rival to win and wed
my sister, now the Lady of Catzu. Immediately I brought down upon my
head the bitterest detestation of my own prince. I was assigned to the
poorest and most degrading of posts, that of the spy and the suppressor
of petty broils, and finally detailed to live in and protect a certain
Eta settlement. So much of my time was thus forcibly spent among these
people that I came to study, to understand, and finally to sympathize
with them.
“I was young, as I have said, impressionable, and I had been trained in
the school of chivalry. It fell to my lot to be the protector of an Eta
maiden of such beauty of person and purity of soul that—”
He broke off in his recital, and, to clear his husky voice, raised with
a shaking hand a tumbler of sake to his lips and swallowed it at a gulp.
He began again, with passionate fierceness. His eyes glittered with
inward fire.
“I married the maiden!”
With a sudden little sob, Wistaria moved closer to him and drew his
hands up to her lips.
“My mother?” The words passed her lips as a quick, burning question.
“Thy mother,” he repeated, and then she saw in the dim light of the room
the great, shining tears roll down the hard crevices in her father’s
face. She moaned and crept closer to him.
“For her I became an Eta—an outcast. Do not shudder, my daughter. Has
the word, then, so evil a sound? Then I perceive you have been wrongly
bred—in the school of prejudice. The Eta, though an outcast, is a human
being—more human, indeed, than many of our disdainful lords who ride
over their heads and trample them like insects beneath their feet.”
“Tell me of my mother,” she whispered.
“Of her antecedents I know naught and care less. Her honorable
grandmother still abides here in my house.”
“Old Madame Mume?”
“Yes.”
“Continue. Pray do so.”
“After my marriage I was cast off immediately by my prince, my titles
and honors were taken from me, my property confiscated. For all this I
cared nothing. I was content and happy to be left at peace with my
wife.”
His long, thin fingers unclenched. He moistened his lips, biting into
them.
“Did I say that this prince under whom I served was arrogant and cruel?
Did I tell you he had a heart of flint and a pride so indomitable that
he would not brook one of his samurai being other than of noble birth?
Six of his vassals, the most graceless and worthless in the province, to
humor his pleasure, undertook to seek me out in my exiled happiness and
engage to make life intolerable for me. Whether their actual intention
was evil or not, I cannot say; that they wrought evil is all I know, and
that they came with the express knowledge and consent of their prince.”
Wistaria observed that her father was trembling so violently that he
scarce could speak. She pressed his hands convulsively within her own.
“Speak quickly, my father,” she implored.
“They murdered her,” he whispered, hoarsely. “Curses and maledictions
upon their souls!”
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[Illustration: Decoration]