his mother sweetly for their kindness, and as she had little strength to
continue her journey, she passed the night in their house. In truth she
passed many nights there, and the streets of Yedo never knew her, for
the young man grew to love her, and made her his wife ere many moons
were out. Daily she became more beautiful--fair she was, and white. Her
little hands, for all she used them for work in the house and work in
the fields, were as white as jasmine flowers; the hot sun could not burn
her neck, or her pale and delicate cheek. In the fulness of time she
bore seven children, all as fair as she, and they grew up tall and
strong with straight noble limbs; their equal could not be found upon
that country-side. Their mother loved them, reared them, laboured for
them. In spite of passing years, in spite of the joys and pains of
motherhood, she looked like a slender maiden; there came no line upon
her forehead, no dimness to her eyes, and no grey hairs.
All the women of the place marvelled at these things, and talked of them
till they were tired. But O'Yuki's husband was the happiest man for
miles round, what with his fair wife and his fair children. Morning and
evening he prayed and said, "Let not the gods visit it upon me if I have
too much joy."
On a certain evening in winter, O'Yuki, having put her children to bed
and warmly covered them, was with her husband in the next room. The
charcoal glowed in the _hibachi_; all the doors of the house were
closely shut, for it was bitter cold, and outside the first big flakes
of a snow-storm had begun to fall. O'Yuki stitched diligently at little
bright-coloured garments. An _andon_ stood on the floor beside her, and
its light fell full upon her face.
Her husband looked at her, musing....
"Dear," he said, "when I look at you to-night I am reminded of an
adventure that came to me many years since."
O'Yuki spoke not at all, but stitched diligently.
"It was an adventure or a dream," said the man her husband, "and which
it was I cannot tell. Strange it was as a dream, yet I think I did not
sleep."
O'Yuki went on sewing.
"Then, only then, I saw a woman, who was as beautiful as you are and as
white ... indeed, she was very like you."
"Tell me about her," said O'Yuki, not lifting her eyes from her work.
"Why," said the man, "I have never spoken of her to anybody." Yet he
spoke then to his undoing. He told of his journey, and how he and his
companion, being benighted in a snow-storm, took shelter in a hut. He
spoke of the white Cold Lady, and of how his friend had died in her
chill embrace.
"Then she came to my side and leaned over me, but she said, 'It is only
a boy ... a pretty boy ... I cannot kill him.' Gods! How cold she was
... how cold.... Afterwards she made me swear, before she left me she
made me swear...."
"You must never speak of me, nor of this night," O'Yuki said, "not to
father, nor mother, nor brother, nor sister, nor to betrothed maid, nor
to wedded wife, nor to boy child, nor to girl child, nor to sun, nor
moon, nor water, fire, wind, rain, snow. All this you swore to me, my
husband, even to me. And after all these years you have broken your
oath. Unkind, unfaithful, and untrue!" She folded her work together and
laid it aside. Then she went to where the children were, and bent her
face over each in turn.
The eldest murmured "Cold ... Cold ..." so she drew the quilt up over
his shoulder.
The youngest cried, "Mother" ... and threw out his little arms.
She said, "I have grown too cold to weep any more."
With that she came back to her husband. "Farewell," she said. "Even now
I cannot kill you for my little children's sakes. Guard them well."
The man lifted up his eyes and saw her. White was her face and
beautiful; white were her trailing garments; her hair was white as it
were with snow that had fallen upon it. Her breath was quite plainly to
be seen as it came from her parted lips. It was like a fair white smoke.
"Farewell! Farewell!" she cried, and her voice grew thin and chill like
a piercing winter wind. Her form grew vague as a snow wreath or a white
vaporous cloud. For an instant it hung upon the air. Then it rose slowly
through the smoke-hole in the ceiling and was no more seen.
XX
THE FIRE QUEST
The Wise Poet sat reading by the light of his taper. It was a night of
the seventh month. The cicala sang in the flower of the pomegranate, the
frog sang by the pond. The moon was out and all the stars, the air was
heavy and sweet-scented. But the Poet was not happy, for moths came by
the score to the light of his taper; not moths only, but cockchafers and
dragon-flies with their wings rainbow-tinted. One and all they came upon
the Fire Quest; one and all they burned their bright wings in the flame
and so died. And the Poet was grieved.
"Little harmless children of the night," he said, "why will you still
fly upon the Fire Quest? Never, never can you attain, yet you strive and
die. Foolish ones, have you never heard the story of the Firefly Queen?"
The moths and the cockchafers and the dragon-flies fluttered about the
taper and paid him no heed.
"They have never heard it," said the Poet; "yet it is old enough.
Listen:
"The Firefly Queen was the brightest and most beautiful of small things
that fly. She dwelt in the heart of a rosy lotus. The lotus grew on a
still lake, and it swayed to and fro upon the lake's bosom while the
Firefly Queen slept within. It was like the reflection of a star in the
water.
"You must know, oh, little children of the night, that the Firefly Queen
had many suitors. Moths and cockchafers and dragon-flies innumerable
flew to the lotus on the lake. And their hearts were filled with
passionate love. 'Have pity, have pity,' they cried, 'Queen of the
Fireflies, Bright Light of the Lake.' But the Firefly Queen sat and
smiled and shone. It seemed that she was not sensible of the incense of
love that arose about her.
"At last she said, 'Oh, you lovers, one and all, what make you here
idly, cumbering my lotus house? Prove your love, if you love me indeed.
Go, you lovers, and bring me fire, and then I will answer.'
"Then, oh, little children of the night, there was a swift whirr of
wings, for the moths and the cockchafers and the dragon-flies
innumerable swiftly departed upon the Fire Quest. But the Firefly Queen
laughed. Afterwards I will tell you the reason of her laughter.
"So the lovers flew here and there in the still night, taking with them
their desire. They found lighted lattices ajar and entered forthwith. In
one chamber there was a girl who took a love-letter from her pillow and
read it in tears, by the light of a taper. In another a woman sat
holding the light close to a mirror, where she looked and painted her
face. A great white moth put out the trembling candle-flame with his
wings.
"'Alack! I am afraid,' shrieked the woman; 'the horrible dark!'
"In another place there lay a man dying. He said, 'For pity's sake light
me the lamp, for the black night falls.'
"'We have lighted it,' they said, 'long since. It is close beside you,
and a legion of moths and dragon-flies flutter about it.'
"'I cannot see anything at all,' murmured the man.
"But those that flew on the Fire Quest burnt their frail wings in the
fire. In the morning they lay dead by the hundred and were swept away
and forgotten.
"The Firefly Queen was safe in her lotus bower with her beloved, who was
as bright as she, for he was a great lord of the Fireflies. No need had
he to go upon the Fire Quest. He carried the living flame beneath his
wings.
"Thus the Firefly Queen deceived her lovers, and therefore she laughed
when she sent them from her on a vain adventure."
* * * * *
"Be not deceived," cried the Wise Poet, "oh, little children of the
night. The Firefly Queen is always the same. Give over the Fire Quest."
But the moths and the cockchafers and the dragon-flies paid no heed to
the words of the Wise Poet. Still they fluttered about his taper, and
they burnt their bright wings in the flame and so died.
Presently the Poet blew out the light. "I must needs sit in the dark,"
he said; "it is the only way."
XXI
A LEGEND OF KWANNON
[Illustration: A Legend of Kwannon.--_P. 165._]
In the days of the gods, Ama-no-Hashidate was the Floating Bridge of
Heaven. By way of this bridge came the deities from heaven to earth,
bearing their jewelled spears, their great bows and heavenly-feathered
arrows, their wonder robes and their magic mirrors. Afterwards, when the
direct way was closed that had been between earth and heaven, and the
deities walked no more upon the Land of Fresh Rice Ears, the people
still called a place Ama-no-Hashidate, for the sake of happy memory.
This place is one of the Three Fair Views of Yamato. It is where a strip
of land runs out into the blue sea, like a floating bridge covered with
dark pine trees.
There was a holy man of Kioto called Saion Zenji. He had followed the
Way of the Gods from his youth up. He was also a disciple of the great
Buddha; well versed was he in doctrines and philosophies; he knew the
perils of illusion and the ineffable joys of Nirvana. Long hours would
he pass in mystic meditation, and many of the Scriptures he had by
heart. When he was on a pilgrimage he came to Ama-no-Hashidate, and he
offered up thanks because the place was so lovely in his eyes.
He said, "The blind and ignorant have it that trees and rocks and the
green sea-water are not sentient things, but the wise know that they
also sing aloud and praise the Tathagata. Here will I take up my rest,
and join my voice with theirs, and will not see my home again."
So Saion Zenji, the holy man, climbed Nariai-San, the mountain over
against Ama-no-Hashidate. And when he had come to the place of the Lone
Pine, he built him a shrine to Kwannon the Merciful, and a hut to cover
his own head.
All day he chanted the Holy Sutras. From dawn to eventide he sang, till
his very being was exalted and seemed to float in an ecstasy of praise.
Then his voice grew so loud and clear that it was a marvel. The blue
campanula of the mountain in reverence bowed its head; the great white
lily distilled incense from its deep heart; the cicala shrilled aloud;
the Forsaken Bird gave a long note from the thicket. About the hermit's
hut there fluttered dragon-flies and butterflies innumerable, which are
the souls of the happy dead. In the far valleys the peasant people were
comforted in their toil, whether they planted out the green young rice,
or gathered in the ears. The sun and the wind were tempered, and the
rain fell softly upon their faces. Ever and again they climbed the steep
hillside to kneel at the shrine of Kwannon the Merciful, and to speak
with the holy man, whose wooden bowl they would fill with rice or
millet, or barley-meal or beans. Sometimes he came down and went through
the villages, where he soothed the sick and touched the little children.
Folks said that his very garments shone.
Now in that country there came a winter season the like of which there
had not been within the memory of man. First came the wind blowing
wildly from the north, and then came the snow in great flakes which
never ceased to fall for the period of nine days. All the folk of the
valleys kept within doors as warm as might be, and those that had their
winter stores fared none so ill. But, ah me, for the bitter cold upon
the heights of Nariai-San! At the Lone Pine, and about the hermit's hut,
the snow was piled and drifted. The shrine of Kwannon the Merciful could
no more be seen. Saion Zenji, the holy man, lived for some time upon the
food that was in his wooden bowl. Then he drew about him the warm
garment of thought, and passed many days in meditation, which was meat
and drink and sleep to him. Howbeit, even his clear spirit could not
utterly dispel the clouds of illusion. At length it came to earth and
all the man trembled with bodily weakness.
"Forgive me, O Kwannon the Merciful," said Saion Zenji; "but verily it
seems to me that if I have no food I die."
Slowly he rose, and painfully he pushed open the door of his hut. The
snow had ceased; it was clear and cold. White were the branches of the
Lone Pine, and all white the Floating Bridge.
"Forgive me, O Kwannon the Merciful," said Saion Zenji; "I know not the
reason, but I am loath to depart and be with the Shades of Yomi. Save me
this life, O Kwannon the Merciful."
Turning, he beheld a dappled hind lying on the snow, newly dead of the
cold. He bowed his head. "Poor gentle creature," he said, "never more
shalt thou run in the hills, and nibble the grass and the sweet
flowers." And he stroked the hind's soft flank, sorrowing.
"Poor deer, I would not eat thy flesh. Is it not forbidden by the Law of
the Blessed One? Is it not forbidden by the word of Kwannon the
Merciful?" Thus he mused. But even as he mused he seemed to hear a voice
that spoke to him, and the voice said:
"Alas, Saion Zenji, if thou die of hunger and cold, what shall become of
my people, the poor folk of the valleys? Shall they not be comforted any
more by the Sutras of the Tathagata? Break the law to keep the law,
beloved, thou that countest the world well lost for a divine song."
Then presently Saion Zenji took a knife, and cut him a piece of flesh
from the side of the dappled hind. And he gathered fir cones and made a
little fire and cooked the deer's flesh in an iron pot. When it was
ready he ate half of it. And his strength came to him again, and he
opened his lips and sang praises to the Tathagata, and the very embers
of the dying fire leapt up in flame to hear him.
"Howbeit I must bury the poor deer," said Saion Zenji. So he went to the
door of his hut. But look where he might no deer nor dappled hind did he
see, nor yet the mark of one in the deep snow.
"It is passing strange," he said, and wondered.
As soon as might be, up came the poor folk from the valley to see how
their hermit had fared through the snow and the stormy weather. "The
gods send he be not dead of cold or hunger," they said one to another.
But they found him chanting in his hut, and he told them how he had
eaten of the flesh of a dappled hind and was satisfied.
"I cut but a hand's breadth of the meat," he said, "and half of it is
yet in the iron pot."
But when they came to look in the pot, they found there no flesh of
deer, but a piece of cedar wood gilded upon the one side. Marvelling
greatly, they carried it to the shrine of Kwannon the Merciful, and when
they had cleared away the deep snow, all of them went in to worship.
There smiled the image of the sweet heavenly lady, golden among her
golden flowers. In her right side there was a gash where the gilded wood
was cut away. Then the poor folk from the valley reverently brought that
which they had found in the hermit's pot, and set it in the gash. And
immediately the wound was healed and the smooth gold shone over the
place. All the people fell on their faces, but the hermit stood singing
the high praise of Kwannon the Merciful.
The sun set in glory. The valley folk crept softly from the shrine and
went down to their own homes. The cold moon and the stars shone upon the
Lone Pine and the Floating Bridge and the sea. Through a rent in the
shrine's roof they illumined the face of Kwannon the Merciful, and made
visible her manifold arms of love. Yet Saion Zenji, her servant, stood
before her singing in an ecstasy, with tears upon his face:
"O wonder-woman, strong and beautiful,
Tender-hearted, pitiful, and thousand-armed!
Thou hast fed me with thine own flesh--
Mystery of mysteries!
Poor dead dappled hind thou cam'st to me;
In the deep of mine own heart thou spoke to me
To keep, yet break, and breaking, keep thy law--
Mystery of mysteries!
Kwannon, the Merciful Lady, stay with me,
Save me from the perils of illusion;
Let me not be afraid of the snow or the Lone Pine.
Mystery of mysteries--
Thou hast refused Nirvana,
Help me that I may lose the world, content,
And sing the Divine Song."
XXII
THE ESPOUSAL OF THE RAT'S DAUGHTER
[Illustration: The Espousal of the Rat's Daughter.--_P. 171._]
Mr. Nedzumi, the Rat, was an important personage in the hamlet where he
lived--at least he was so in his own and his wife's estimation. This was
in part, of course, due to the long line of ancestors from whom he was
descended, and to their intimate association with the gods of Good
Fortune. For, be it remembered, his ancestry went back into a remote
past, in fact as far as time itself; for had not one of his race been
selected as the first animal in the cycle of the hours, precedence being
even given him over the dragon, the tiger, and the horse? As to his
intimacy with the gods, had not one of his forebears been the chosen
companion of the great Daikoku, the most revered and the most beneficent
of the gods of Good Fortune?
Mr. Rat was well-to-do in life. His home had for generations been
established in a snug, warm and cosy bank, hard by one of the most
fertile rice-fields on the country-side, where crops never failed, and
where in spring he could nibble his fill of the young green shoots, and
in autumn gather into his storerooms supplies of the ripened grain
sufficient for all his wants during the coming winter.
For his needs were not great. Entertainment cost him but little, and,
unlike his fellows, he had the smallest of families, in fact a family of
one only.
But, as regards that one, quality more than compensated for quantity,
for it consisted of a daughter, of a beauty unsurpassed in the whole
province. He himself had been the object of envy in his married life,
for he had had the good fortune to marry into a family of a very select
piebald breed, which seldom condescended to mix its blood with the
ordinary self-coloured tribe, and now his daughter had been born a
peerless white, and had received the name of Yuki, owing to her
resemblance to pure snow.
It is little wonder, then, that as she grew up beautiful in form and
feature, her father's ambitions were fired, and that he aspired to marry
her to the highest in the land.
As it happened, the hamlet where he lived was not very far removed from
a celebrated temple, and Mr. Rat, having been brought up in the odour of
sanctity, had all his life long been accustomed to make pilgrimages to
the great shrine. There he had formed the acquaintance of an old priest,
who was good enough to provide for him out of the temple offerings in
return for gossip as to the doings of his village, which happened to be
that in which the priest had been born and bred. To him the rat had
often unburdened his mind, and the old priest had come to see his
friend's self-importance and his little weaknesses, and had in vain
impressed upon him the virtues of humility.
Now Mr. Rat could find no one amongst his village companions to inform
him where to attain what had now become an insatiable desire, namely, a
fine marriage for his daughter. So he turned to the temple custodian for
advice, and one summer morn found him hammering on the gong which
summoned his friend the priest.
"Welcome, Mr. Rat; to what am I indebted for your visit?" said the old
priest, for experience had shown him that his friend seldom came so far
afield unless he had some request to make.
Thereupon Mr. Rat unburdened himself of all that was in his mind, of his
aspiration, and of the difficulty he had in ascertaining in what manner
he could obtain it.
Nor did the priest immediately satisfy him, for he said the matter was a
difficult one, and would require much consideration. However, on the
third day the oracle gave answer as follows: "There is no doubt that
apart from the gods there is no one so powerful, or who exercises so
beneficent a rule over us, as His Majesty the Sun. Had I a daughter, and
did I aspire to such heights for her as you do, I should make my suit to
him, and I should take the opportunity of so doing when he comes down to
our earth at sundown, for then it is that he decks himself in his most
gorgeous apparel; moreover, he is more readily approached when his day's
work is done, and he is about to take his well-earned rest. Were I you
I would lose no time, but present myself in company with your honourable
wife and daughter to him this very evening at the end of the great
Cryptomeria Avenue at the hour when he especially honours it by flooding
it with his beams."
"A thousand thanks," said Mr. Rat. "No time is to be lost if I am to get
my folk together at the time and place you mention."
"Good fortune to you," said the priest; "may I hail you the next time I
see you as father-in-law to His Majesty the Sun."
At the appointed hour parents and daughter were to be seen in the
avenue, robed in their finest clothes; and as the sun came earthwards
and his rays illumined the gloom under the great pines, Mr. Rat, noway
abashed, addressed His Majesty and at once informed him of his desire.
His Majesty, evidently considering that one business personage
addressing another should not waste time in beating about the bush,
replied as follows: "I am extremely beholden to you for your kind
intention of allowing me to wed your honourable and beautiful daughter,
O Yuki San, but may I ask your reason for selecting me to be your
honourable son-in-law?"
To this Mr. Rat replied, "We have determined to marry our daughter to
whoever is the most powerful personage in the world, and that is why we
desire to offer her to you in marriage."
"Yes," said His Majesty, "you are certainly not without reason in
imagining me to be the most august and powerful person in the world;
but, unfortunately, it has been my misfortune to discover that there is
one other even more powerful than myself, against whose plottings I have
no power. It is to him that you should very certainly marry your
daughter."
"And may we honourably ask you who that potentate may be?" said Mr. Rat.
"Certainly," rejoined the Sun. "It is the Cloud. Oftentimes when I have
set myself to illumine the world he comes across my path and covers my
face so that my subjects may not see me, and so long as he does this I
am altogether in his power. If, therefore, it is the most powerful
personage in the world whom you seek for your daughter, the honourable O
Yuki San, you must bestow her on no one else than the Cloud."
It required little consideration for both father and mother to see the
wisdom of the Sun's advice, and upon his suggestion they determined to
wait on the Cloud at the very earliest opportunity, and at an hour
before he rose from his bed, which he usually made on the slopes of a
mountain some leagues removed from their village. So they set out, and a
long journey they had, so long that Mr. Rat decided that if he was to
present his daughter when she was looking her best, the journey must not
be hurried. Consequently, instead of arriving at early dawn, it was full
afternoon when they neared the summit where the Cloud was apparently
wrapped in slumber. But he roused himself as he saw the family
approaching, and bade them welcome in so urbane a manner that the Rat
at once proceeded to lay his request before him.
To this the Cloud answered, "I am indeed honoured by your condescension
in proposing that I should marry your beauteous daughter, O Yuki San. It
is quite true, as His August Majesty the Sun says, that when I so desire
I have the strength to stay him from exercising his power upon his
subjects, and I should much esteem the privilege of wedding your
daughter. But as you would single out for that honour the most powerful
person in the world, you must seek out His Majesty the Wind, against
whom I have no strength, for as soon as he competes with me for
supremacy I must fain fly away to the ends of the earth."
"You surprise me," said the Rat, "but I take your word for it. I would,
therefore, ask you whether His Majesty the Wind will be this way
shortly, and where I may best meet him."
"I am afraid I cannot tell you at the moment when he is likely to be
this way. He usually announces his coming by harrying some of my
subjects who act as my outposts, but, as you see, they are now all
resting quietly. His Majesty is at this moment, I believe, holding a
court far out in the Eastern Seas. Were I you I would go down to the
seashore and await his coming. He is often somewhat inclined to be
short-tempered by the time he gets up into these mountainous parts,
owing to the obstructions he has met with on his journey, and he will
have had few of these vexatious annoyances during his ride over the
sea."