“Yamashiro Yoshida will not marry me. He has cast me off,” Hyacinth told
Aoi.
“And to-night,” said Aoi, helplessly, “the father will arrive.”
The girl pressed her hands tightly together. Aoi laid a timid,
comforting hand upon her shoulder.
“Little one,” she said, in a pleading voice, “pray thee to take cheer.
It is your duty to go to your father. You have not forgotten all I have
taught you. Filial submission to the parent is the most important of
all.”
“And have I not always shown such respect and devotion to you, dear
mother?”
“To me? Ah, yes, little one, and I would that I were, indeed, your own
mother.”
“You are, you are,” cried the girl, crushing down the sob that rose in
her throat, and then dashing her hand against her eyes. “Ah,” she cried,
“this is not time to weep. We must think—must think of some way.
Yamashiro has failed us. Ah! Who could have expected else? They were
always despicable.”
“Try and follow my counsel,” said Aoi; “accept the inevitable. The
father is coming; he is your rightful guardian. Bow to his will and give
him what affection you can.”
“I can give him not one grain of affection,” said the girl, bitterly.
“Did he not cast off my mother for that other woman? Ah, I have heard
all the story. What I could not understand that first day I have learned
since, and you also. Did you not tell me that my mother died shuddering
at his memory?”
Aoi sighed helplessly. The girl threw herself down on the floor, and,
resting her chin upon her hand, stared out before her at the street
without. There had been a little rain, and the bamboo trees across the
street were shining with the drops which had not yet dried upon them.
Looking down the street, she could see the dim outline of the country
beyond, the cloud-shaped mountains, the sheen of the water beneath. She
turned back to Aoi, who had silently seated herself beside her.
“Mother,” she said, “I am going away alone.”
“Alone! Ah, you make my heart stand still with fear.”
“Listen. All Matsushima is known to me, and the priests at the temple
are kind and love me. If I need food they will give it to me. Do they
not feed even the birds which alight upon their temples?”
“Oh, child, I cannot think what it is you contemplate.”
“I will not leave our Japan,” she cried, passionately. “It is the only
home I have known.”
“But what can you do?”
“I will hide,” said the girl.
“Ah, alas, you could not, for these foreigners are everywhere here. They
would find you.”
“Yet there are places among the tombs of Date of which they know naught.
Koma and I alone knew of them, and the good priest of the temple
Zuiganjii. There is one place—but I will not tell even you.”
Aoi wrung her hands.
“Oh, daughter, they will seek everywhere for you till they find you. You
do not know the stubborn nature of these people.”
“Ah, but I do, my mother, for that nature is in me, too. If they seek
stubbornly, I, too, can hide as well.”
Arising, she stood a moment, looking down thoughtfully upon Aoi.
“To-night,” she said, “they will come. There is little time to lose.
When they ask for me, you will say, ‘She feared to gaze upon the
augustness of her parent, and so fled.’ When they ask you, ‘Where fled?’
you will say, ‘Only the gods know whither.’”
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[Illustration]
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