THE pain was quite gone from the brain and head. The fever had abated. A
strange sense of coolness and rest pervaded the whole being of Keiki.
The Shining Prince fell to dreaming, this time without a hideous
nightmare being wrought upon his mind.
Once more he was standing in a royal garden, where the little winds blew
about him laden with the faint, subtle odor of early spring; where the
birds clattered and cried out indignantly at him for disturbing them so
early; where the sun arose from behind the mountains veiled in a golden
cloud and travelled over the heavens, pausing to tint the waters of a
slender river to the magic glow of blood and gold. The soft, glad winds
caressed as they called to him now. Moved to bend the knee in greeting
and homage, he had become a sun-worshipper. He stood waiting beneath a
flowered casement, waiting in a silence pregnant with inward feeling.
Not a sound stirred about him; the birds had dropped to sleep again; but
the glory of the sun had deepened and spread its full radiance upon the
casement. Then very slowly a maiden’s face, like a picture of the
sun-goddess with the halo of the sun about it, grew into the vision,
until gradually the dream-eyes of the Prince Keiki saw naught else save
that haunting spiritual face, with its eyes laden with love and still
suffused with unutterable sadness.
As suddenly as it had come, the vision faded away. Darkness passed
between him and the face of his dreams. He sat upon his couch,
stretching out imploring, beseeching hands as he called aloud, with a
cry of piercing pleading:
“Fuji—Fuji-wara!”
Then he became dreamily conscious that soft hands were gently pushing
him backward. He knew that her arms were pressed about him, that she had
put her face against his own. He tried to speak, but she closed his lips
with her own upon them, and answered, in that sighing voice of hers:
“It is I, Wistaria! Pray thee to sleep!”
Keiki fell into a delicious, dreamless slumber. Beside him, her arms
supporting against her bosom the weight of his head, Wistaria knelt,
unmoving, for the space of an hour. Her eyes had that strange, brooding,
guarding expression of the mother.
Some one tapped with the lightness of a child upon the fusuma. Wistaria
tightened her arms about her lover. Her face became strained and rigid.
Her eyes enlarged with mingled terror and savage defiance.
The tapping was repeated. Still she made no response. There was an
interval of silence. Then the sliding door was softly pushed aside. Some
one entered the room, and stood against the wall looking down at the
little, silent figure with its face of appealing, helpless agony. The
next moment the samurai Genji was kneeling beside Wistaria.
For a moment she could not speak, so intense were her mingled emotions.
She had thought herself bereft of all friends on earth. In her father
and aunt she could see nothing but menacing enemies who had assumed the
dark guise of fiends. Yet here was Genji—Genji, her own, big
samurai—whose very presence brought a sense of safety and repose. A
strange little laugh, half a strangled sob, struggled through her lips.
In one glance Genji saw that the weight of the Prince in her slender
arms was benumbing them. Without a word he lifted the sleeping Prince in
his own arms and put him gently back upon the padded robe which served
as his couch. Then turning to his mistress he half assisted her, half
lifted her, to her feet. For a moment she leaned against him, dizzy with
weakness.
In a broken, piteous, helpless fashion she began to cry against his
breast, the pent-up anguish of many days finding its outlet.
Genji gently led her across the room, beyond the possible awakening of
the Prince. His big voice, hushed to a whisper despite its huskiness,
was as soothing as a mother’s.
“Aré moshi! See, the big Gen is here. All is well! Very well!”
“Oh, Gen!” she sobbed, “I do not know what to do!”
“Do? Why, we must cease to weep, so we may have the strength to minister
to the sick.”
“Y-yes—I will cease to weep,” she whispered, brokenly. “I—I will do so.”
“That is right.”
“And you will not let them harm him, will you, Gen?”
“No! I swear by my sword I will not!”
“You are so good and strong, Gen!”
Placing his hands upon her shoulders he held her back, then gently wiped
the tears from her face.
“Hah!” he cried. “Now she is once again the brave girl. That is right.
She is the daughter of a samurai, and cannot weep for long.”
She tried to smile through her tears, but it was a very pitiful little
smile which struggled through the mist.
“Now,” said he, “tell me everything.”
“Do you not know all?” she asked.
“No, I do not. I am in darkness as to how your lover comes to be here,
wounded and ill; but I surmise that he was captured while on his way to
Choshui and prevented from warning his prince.”
“You do not know,” cried Wistaria, looking up into his face with
startled eyes, “that he is the prince himself?”
“The prince! Who is the prince? What prince?”
“The young Prince of Mori. He”—she indicated Keiki—“he is the same
person.”
It was Genji’s turn to start. He made a movement towards the Prince, but
Wistaria grasped his arm and stayed him.
“Nay, do not go to him. He is so tired, Gen. He has been awake, though
unconscious, all night long, and he needs the honorable rest the gods
have denied him so long.”
“But you do not mean to tell me that your lover is the young Mori
prince?”
“Yes, even so, Gen, though I knew it not until—until they brought him
here.”
“Brought him here! Why—but this man—the Prince Mori is condemned to
death! He was found guilty of treason—he—oh, it is quite impossible!”
“Alas! but it is true.”
“You do not mean that your father brought him here under penalty of
death?”
Her head was bent forward. She covered her face with her sleeve.
“Shaka!” exclaimed Genji. “We must do something at once.”
“Yes, oh yes! You, Gen, you will take him away—will you not, Gen?—and
protect him, for if you do not they will kill him, or force me to marry
with him.”
“Force you to marry with him!”
“Yes. Do you not understand? I am only an Eta girl.”
“I know that.”
“And my father believes that if he were to marry me to the Prince he
would legally become an outcast, and it would break his father’s heart.”
“That is very true.”
“Then you see, Gen, how imperative it is that he should be taken away at
once.”
“Why, no, I do not so regard it.”
“You do not? Then what am I to do?”
“Marry him at once.”
“But, indeed, I cannot do so.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, Gen, it would be too humiliating for him to debase himself. I could
not be so false as to deceive him and drag him down from his high
estate. I could not do it.”
“Pugh! You overrate the ignominy of the Eta. In the old days when your
father married among them the prejudice was at its bitterest. He is not
aware of the changes which are rapidly taking place in the thought of
the people of Japan to-day, nor does he know that this very prince
represents to the people that new era which is about to dawn wherein all
men will have equal rights and privileges. Your honorable father has
lived only in his own sorrows, knowing little of what is taking place in
his country. Take advantage of his ignorance, I advise you.”
“But he would never forgive me,” she said.
“Who? Your prince? Never forgive you for marrying him! Why, I thought he
had wooed you for that purpose!”
“Yes,” she sighed, “but he did not know the truth then. Perhaps if he
had known of my lowly station—”
“It would have made no difference. I tell you I am well acquainted with
this family of Mori. They are a proud but not ignoble race, and this new
scion has shown a braver and better blood than all of his august
ancestors.”
“I cannot do it,” she said, shaking her head despairingly. “So do you,
pray, Sir Gen, assist me to put him in hiding somewhere.”
“Tsh! That is impossible. Why, see, he is a big fellow. We could not
carry him far, and the place here is surrounded by spies. He would meet
a worse fate than if—”
She became paler and shivered visibly.
“I do not like to hear you speak so,” she said.
“I do not like to see you act so, my lady,” said Gen. “What! You would
desert your lover when he most needs you!”
“Oh, Gen, no! I did not say that.”
“When there is a way by which you can save his life, you refuse to do
so? Very well, then; better deliver him up at once to his executioners.”
“Oh-h!”
She interrupted him with a sharp cry of fright. The sound of her voice
reaching the Prince as he slept, he turned uneasily on his couch,
sighing heavily. Genji and Wistaria listened to him in breathless
silence. Then, with her face turned towards the Prince, Wistaria moved
close to his couch, whispering tremulously:
“Yes, yes, I must do it. It is the only way—the only way!”
“That is right,” said Genji, patting her hand reassuringly.
She walked unsteadily back to her lover. Once more she sank down on her
knees beside him. Her face wore an expression the big samurai could not
bear to look upon. He moved very silently and stood against the door of
the chamber, straight and immovable as a statue, and strong and
invincible as a war god on guard.
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[Illustration: Decoration]