THE Prince Keiki had been on the highway three days before he became
again something more than an unconscious automaton. After the first
great shock of Wistaria’s revelation had passed from him, there had come
a desperate terror and horror which seemed to numb his faculties. For
several days he was not conscious of anything either within or without
him. There was no anguish in his heart or intelligence in his brain. His
memory of events succeeding Wistaria’s unmasking, as he believed it, was
as vague as the tangled threads of a dream. He had fallen into that
apathetic lethargy with which he had been afflicted upon his arrest.
He had, it is true, uncertain recollections of a place passed on the
way, or of a halt here and refreshment there, but he could not assert
that they were real. He might have dreamed them. He could not tell.
Then Keiki returned to his normal being. He awoke as from a troubled
sleep to a world of torment. Could he have slept, and, sleeping, have
imagined the events with which the name Wistaria was repulsively
associated? No! It was, alas, all too true. He must bear it. As the
first sharp anguish of his awakening passed away, there came visions to
comfort Keiki.
When what he termed in after years his great awakening burst upon him,
he found himself walking down a muddy road which led, his sense of
locality told him, south to his province of Choshui. It was raining,
fiercely, sullenly. Almost with a feeling of relief, Keiki found that he
was wet. It gave him new life and new courage to do some simple
elemental thing, such as drawing his cape tighter, closer about him.
Then, as he battled against the wind and the driving rain, a fierce joy
came to him. He was wise in the wisdom of suffering. His life should be
devoted to the cause. No woman should destroy the significance life held
for him.
Too long had he tarried with inclination. He had pictured to himself a
beautiful highway through life, upon which Wistaria should tread by his
side. She was lost forever. The rough path, the developing path of
struggle, should be his. He would not falter. He would be true first to
himself, his higher self, and then to the holy cause of his country.
Patriotism and the restoration of rightful rule to the Mikado should
guide him in every act. The events through which he had passed had
consecrated him anew. His life could not be taken; he could not fail,
until all had been accomplished.
In the new life which he was about to enter his course would not always
be plain; he would not always be understood. For that he must be
prepared.
When the Prince Keiki had thus settled the past and ordered the future,
he began to take cognizance of outward conditions, as became him now. It
was wet, and growing dark. He must seek shelter for the night. Turning
aside from the highway, Keiki asked the simple hospitality of the
country-side from a little house hard by the path of travel. Although it
was long past the hour of their evening meal, the good dwellers in the
cottage sent their daughter to the rear of the house to prepare food for
the hungry Prince.
Sitting alone in a corner, Keiki, waited upon by the little maiden,
found a quiet and comfort that three days ago he would have thought
impossible. A strange comfort exhales from a perfectly appointed meal
after the heart has been tried. It is the acme of despair, the
realization of one’s duty to one’s self. Keiki, absorbed in these
fantastic reflections, suddenly became conscious of the fact that for
several minutes past the little maid had been making strange signals to
him. Seeing this, he signed to her to advance. She did so, but in a
faltering and almost fearful fashion. When near enough to him to speak
without being overheard, she glanced in terror at his face and slipped
to the ground, where she prostrated herself at his feet, her head
nodding in frantic motions of servility.
“Why, what is this?” ejaculated the Prince, displeased.
“Y—your highness!” she gasped.
“Speak,” said Keiki, sternly. “You appear desirous of serving me. What
is it?”
She rose tremblingly.
“You must not tarry here long,” she whispered. “The spies of the Shogun
are about.”
“Ha!”
“It is broadly reported that the Shining Prince Keiki has escaped his
fate. The roads are beset. They are tracking his footsteps. Even now
some of them are before the house. Oh, my lord, I know you to resemble
too closely the Shining Prince for you to linger here. We—the whole
country—are in sympathy with thee and would befriend thee, but the
shogunate—” She broke off, her fear and distress completely overpowering
her.
Keiki laid an alert hand upon his sword.
“None may take me now,” he said, defiantly, “for I am become
invincible.”
“Come!” urged the little maid.
“Whither?” inquired the Prince.
Pushing aside the doors at the rear, she led Keiki into the garden.
Passing through it, they came to a wall. The maid spoke.
“Climb this, turn to the west. Go along the road a bit until you come to
a cross-path. Take that, and you will come out upon your southern route
below the danger point. I—”
There was a movement in the bushes behind.
“Oh, all the gods!” she cried. “It is too late, I fear!”
“What do you there?” a voice, stern with threatening, demanded from the
bushes. The maid responded:
“Peace to thee! I do but bid farewell to my lover.”
A laugh answered.
“Do not fear, maiden. We do not disturb cooing birds,” came from the
bushes, and a drawn sword was shifted from hand to hand, carelessly.
The warm blood surged about the temples of Keiki. Because of the perfidy
of Wistaria, he would accept no service from her sex.
“I did not need thy lie, maiden,” he said.
Then to those in the bushes he shouted:
“I am he whom you seek, the Prince Keiki. Come, take me!”
As he spoke, he hurled his cape to the ground and rested his sword with
its point upon his sandalled foot. Quick as was his action, it was met
by those lurking in hiding. Three forms glided out from the bushes.
Three blades flashed towards him. Keiki’s quick eye perceived that those
attacking him wore but one sword. They were evidently merely Shogun
spies or common soldiery. Their clumsy handling of their swords filled
his soul with a wild elation. He would have some play with these
vassals—he, Keiki, the most exquisite swordsman in Japan, and the most
finished Jiujutsu student.
“Come hither—hither!” he taunted. “Without dishonor ye may yield
yourselves to me, Keiki, the invincible!”
A savage yell replied. In imagination, perhaps, the Shogun spies saw the
glittering price of the Prince’s head within their hands. They closed
with him.
The hand of Keiki instantly snatched the second sword from his belt.
With a sword in each hand he met the advance. The sword in his right
hand met and parried the initial blows and thrusts of his two
adversaries; the sword in his left met the blade of the third, and,
though it could not attack, maintained an effective defence.
The attacking swordsmen were startled. Such a thing was beyond the
traditions of the samurai, and a feat wellnigh impossible.
Of a sudden the blade of the first of Keiki’s adversaries dealt a
vicious blow. Keiki met it with his left-hand sword, and before the
blade could be recovered by his enemy the sword in his right hand had
turned to the second adversary. This one, unprepared for Keiki’s sudden
onslaught, fell back, with his sword-arm severed at the wrist. Again the
first antagonist thrust; Keiki met him. He now had an antagonist on
either side of him, at points nearly opposite. He answered the blow of
the one with the first of his two swords, while the other recovered his
blade. There could be only one issue to such unequal combat. The
position of his adversaries would not permit Keiki to fight them with
one sword alone. Alive to the necessities of his position, Keiki kept
slowly turning as his opponents tried to take him from behind. Suddenly
Keiki fell upon his left knee, as though overcome, while with his
right-hand sword he kept up a vigorous attack. The sword in his left
hand became feebler, weaker in its movements. Thinking Keiki affected by
some of the numerous small wounds with which he was covered despite his
defence, the soldier on Keiki’s left rushed in to despatch him, leaving
himself but poorly guarded. The sword opposed to him became swiftly
active. It passed into the breast of the samurai, where Keiki, glad that
its necessity was over, allowed it to remain.
Quickly regaining his feet, the Prince devoted himself to his remaining
enemy, who was a better swordsman than the others.
“Yield!” threatened Keiki, as he dealt a furious blow at the other’s
head.
His antagonist laughed. Immediately Keiki thrust in quick succession at
the other’s breast, head, and throat. His first blow was parried. The
second at the head was a feint. As the soldier raised his sword to meet
it, Keiki unopposed, thrust through his throat. He fell.
Breathing heavily from his exertion, Keiki looked about him for the
maid, and the spy whose hand he had severed. He found the maiden bending
over the lifeless body of his antagonist. From her hand a small dagger
slipped to the ground. Satisfied as to her safety, Keiki quickly drew
out his left sword from the breast of his opponent. Then without a word
he climbed the wall and took the southern route again, disdaining to
follow the directions of his late hostess.
In a rice-field farther down the road he bound up his wounds with the
torn lining of his haori. Through the larger part of the following day
he slept.
Alarmed by the recent occurrences at the little house by the highway,
Keiki, who believed that the Shogun had put a price upon his head, now
travelled only at night. The days he spent in sleep, and in locating,
without exposing himself too much, the scenes of foraging expeditions
made at night through which he managed to secure the means of
sustenance.
The vigorous and unnatural fight through which he had just passed had a
further invigorating effect upon him. Before that he had been near to
death in his thoughts—death for the cause. Now he resolved in fresh and
vigorous determination to live—and to live gloriously for the greatest
cause that had ever made a pulse to leap in Japan.
At dusk on the fifth day after the fight, Keiki set forth upon the last
stage of his journey. He was now near to the borders of the Choshui
province. A few hours later he reckoned that he had crossed the boundary
and was well within the limits of his father’s country, when there came
to him the sound of swords clashing beyond a turn in the road. Keiki,
now grown cautious, skirted the spot through a field, and then crept
within sight of the place.
Five men were pitted against three, while on the road lay the bodies of
two more. Keiki had made up his mind to aid the lesser party, when an
exclamation in well-remembered tones came to him. It was from one of the
lesser party, old Hashimoto, a trusted follower of his father.
In a moment Keiki was in the road. Before either party were aware of his
presence, he had killed two of the larger number.
“I aid thee!” he shouted, as with his father’s men he engaged the
despised Shogun followers. Speedily another of their number fell. The
four obtained the easy surrender of the others.
Hashimoto approached the Prince.
“We thank thee for thy aid—” he began. Then, recognizing Keiki, he
started back a pace and fell upon his knees.
“My noble prince! My master!” he cried, as he caught his robe and
reverently pressed it to his lips.
“Thy master?” repeated Keiki. “My father, what of him?”
“Taken, your highness.”
“Taken?”
“After the rumors of your capture, your highness, we at once determined
to raise the Imperial standard against the Shogun, and your father—”
“But we were not ready. None of our plans had been carried out!” cried
the Prince.
Hashimoto answered:
“True, your highness, but your father was promised the assistance of
most of the southern clans. Consequently he seized a number of Buddhist
monasteries and cast their huge bronze bells into cannon. His
undertaking was revealed to the Shogun before our allies could join us,
and he was surprised and taken captive.”
“He serves a sentence?”
“He was sentenced, your highness. But the gods have anticipated—he is
dead.”
Keiki threw off his cape, which Hashimoto respectfully lifted.
“Attend me to the fortress,” he commanded.
The followers bowed deeply. Suddenly Keiki raised his voice.
“Daigi Meibunor! The Shogun shall die!” he cried.
The followers answered with a cheer.
With head bowed in deep thought, Keiki led the way towards the principal
fortress and castle of the Mori.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: Decoration]