Part 9

Wistaria sat very still now. Ever since Genji had come upon her that first day with the wounded Prince in her arms Wistaria had been a prey to the utmost despair and anguish. The infinite faith and trust of her lover filled her continually with a greater horror of her deceit, for she could not forget, not for one moment, the part she had been forced to play in the undoing of the Prince. How could she add to her other iniquities by inveigling this noble and generous-hearted Prince into a marriage which would not fail to debase him? And yet she had no alternative, for otherwise his life would be the forfeit. Was it possible for her to tell him all this? Would it be, as he had said, a solution of her misery to confess her own deceit and warn him of the danger in which he stood, that of marrying into an outcast family?

As she thought thus sadly, the gentle voice of her lover brought the tears to her eyes. But she held them back, almost feverishly placing a greater distance between herself and the Prince. In that moment when his tender eyes held hers in their gaze, while he trustfully waited for her to speak, she was ready to tell him everything.

“You are about to tell me all,” he said, as though he understood her unspoken volition. “Do not mistrust me. Believe in my adoration for you. Give me thy heart completely.”

A sudden shivering took possession of Wistaria. Instead of speaking, she drew her sleeve across her face, a characteristic habit with her when in despair. Gradually her head sank forward, until she knelt at his feet in an attitude of humility.

“Nay, do not kneel,” he cried, “nor hide thy face from me. Do not so, I beseech thee.”

Having permitted his assistance in rising, she freed herself from his encircling arm.

“Look at me, my lord,” she cried. “Tell me, what do you see?”

“A maiden as beautiful as the sun-goddess and as good—”

“Nay, then, do not speak so. Look at me again, my lord. Have you then found such pleasure in my beauty that you have not even remarked my garments?”

“Your garments?”

Bewilderment was in his face.

“Yes. Are these the silks, my lord, worn by the ladies of your rank?”

“Nay, but though I cannot conceive why you should be garbed in cotton, yet I see no disgrace in the fact. Perchance the samurai Genji is honorably poor, and you are so courteous as to dress in homely garments while a guest of his honorable household.”

“I am not a guest of his household, my lord.”

“But—”

“I know it has been told you so. Nevertheless, this is the house of my father.”

“I do not understand,” he exclaimed.

He added immediately, “If it is that your honorable father is poor—”

“You are wrong, my lord. My father is in the service of the government. His remuneration is ample.”

“Then do explain to me the reason why you are so garbed and situated.”

“Because it is so enacted by the law,” she said.

“The law!”

“I am an Eta woman.”

“An Eta! Impossible!”

“That was the offence for which my father was banished—because of his marriage to an Eta maiden.”

The Prince stared at her aghast. She stood as still as if made of stone. Her lover’s silence was due to his repugnance at this revelation, she thought. Seeing his effort to speak, she prayed a little prayer to the gods that he would spare her. The Prince found his voice.

“Then by the royal blood of my ancestors, I swear,” he cried, “that I shall be guilty of the same offence as thy honorable parent, and for thy sweet sake I, too, shall become an Eta.”

With a little, trembling cry she started towards him.

“But thy cause! Oh, my lord, thy noble cause!”

“The cause!” He threw back his head and laughed with buoyant joyousness.

“Fuji-wara,” he said, “do you not perceive that a new life is about to dawn for this Japan of ours?”

“A new life,” she repeated, breathlessly, hanging upon the words that escaped his lips.

“A new life,” he said, “with our country no longer broken up into factions, when men shall have equal rights and privileges.”

He smiled at her rapt face, and possessed himself of both her little hands.

“Dearest and sweetest of maidens,” he said, tenderly, “in marrying me you do not wed a prince. I am pledged to the welfare of the people. Know you not that the great cause of the Imperialist will bring about that Restoration which will overturn all these crushing tyrannies and injustices which press our people to the earth? Repeat with me, then: ‘Daigi Meibunor! Banzai the Imperialist!’”

Suddenly she remembered the blow she had dealt the cause. Her head fell upon their clasped hands.

But over her fallen head the voice of the Prince Keiki was full of joy.

“And now I have heard the great trouble, and have I not burst it like a bubble? Henceforward, then, let there be only happiness and joy in these eyes and these lips.” Reverently he pressed her eyes and lips.

Genji was heard outside the door. His face was very grave and his whole appearance perturbed when he entered.

Bowing deeply to the Prince, he addressed him hastily:

“Your excellency, the Lord of Catzu has arrived at my insignificant house and is below. It is his wish that the marriage of his niece should be celebrated without further delay. I come to you, therefore, to beg that you will consent to its immediate consummation.”

“I comply with gladness,” replied the Prince, “but may I inquire the reason for this haste?”

“The Lord Catzu Toro is in critical peril in your august father’s province.”

“Enough!” interrupted the Prince, impulsively. “You desire my immediate mediation in his behalf?”

He turned to Wistaria with an exclamation of delight. “Now,” said he, “we shall see all our troubles melt into thin air like mist before the sun.”

“But I have not told you all—there is more still to tell. I pray you—” Wistaria began.

“There is no time,” interrupted Genji, severely, “and I beg your highness will convince the Lady Wistaria of the necessity for haste.”

“That is right,” said the Prince. “There is a whole lifetime before us yet in which thou canst tell me thy heart. Come. Let us descend to the wedding-chamber.”

XX

NO Prince of Japan had ever been wedded in so strange and lowly a fashion. There was not a sign or sound of the gratulation, rejoicing, or pomp which usually attend such ceremonies. When the Prince Keiki and the Lady Wistaria, attended by the samurai Genji, entered the homely wedding apartment, they found a small group, pale and solemn, awaiting them. It consisted of the Lord and Lady Catzu and one who was a stranger to Keiki, but whom he knew to be the father of the Lady Wistaria.

The waiting party bowed very low and solemnly to those who had just entered. Their greeting was returned with an equal gravity and grace. There was a pause—a hush. Keiki looked about him inquiringly, and then he shivered. The true solemnity of the occasion dawned upon him so that even the near joy of possessing Wistaria at last passed from his mind. He was about to join through marriage two families who hitherto had had for each other nothing save hatred and detestation.

Timid and pale as his glance was, he scarcely dared to look at the Lady Wistaria, though he knew she was so weak and faint that the samurai Genji had to support her.

Somewhat sharply, the voice of the Lady Evening Glory broke the silence.

“Why do we wait?”

The Lord Catzu stirred uneasily, glancing from the bridal couple to his wife, and then to the inscrutable face of Shimadzu.

“If I may be permitted to remark,” he said, apologetically, “the Lady Wistaria is certainly garbed unbefitting her rank and race.”

“Chut!” said his wife, angrily, “you would delay matters for such a trifle? Every moment counts now against our son. Will you let such an insignificant matter as the dress of your unworthy niece hasten the possible death of our beloved?”

“When it is her wedding-dress, yes,” said Catzu, stubbornly. “May I be stricken blind before I witness such a disgrace brought upon my honorable niece’s dignity. She must be married as befits her rank, I repeat.”

A sour smile played over the features of the Lady Evening Glory.

“That is true. Well, her rank is that of the Eta,” she said, tartly.

Having found the courage to disagree with his lady, Catzu now set her at complete defiance. He marched towards the door.

“Very well, then. I refuse to witness such an outrageous ceremony. The lady may have Eta kindred, but do not forget that she has also the blood of royalty in her veins.”

His consort could hardly suppress her fury.

“I appeal to you, honored brother,” she said. “How shall it be?”

“And I,” exploded Catzu, who was in an evil and contrary temper, “appeal to you, my Lord of Mori,” and he bowed profoundly to the Prince.

Shimadzu made no response. His glance met that of the troubled Prince. Keiki flushed under his penetrating eyes. Then he spoke with graceful dignity, bowing meanwhile to the trembling Wistaria.

“Let her be garbed,” he said, “as befits the daughter of her father and the bride of a Prince of Mori.”

There was silence for a space. Then Shimadzu made an imperative gesture to Genji, who gently led the girl from the chamber, followed by the angrily resigned Lady Evening Glory.

The three men, now alone, waited in strained silence for Wistaria’s return. Straight and stiff, with heads somewhat bent to the floor, they remained standing in almost identical attitudes. Gradually, however, Catzu broke the tension by an attempt to relieve his excessive nervousness. Resting first on one foot and then on the other, he shifted about. His eyes lingered in painful sympathy upon the Prince, and then irresolutely turned to the samurai. Perspiration stood out on the lord’s brow. He was suffering physically from the strain.

After a long interval of this intolerable silence, the doors of the chamber were again pushed aside. The samurai Genji entered. Bowing deeply, he announced:

“The Lady Wistaria and her august aunt enter the honorable chamber!”

The two ladies, close behind Genji, now followed him into the room. Immediately all prostrated themselves. When they had regained their feet, it was found that Wistaria was still kneeling. Then Genji perceived that she had not risen because she was unable to do so. Without a word, he lifted her to her feet. One moment she leaned against his strong arm, then seemed to gather strength. Stepping apart from him, she stood alone there in the middle of the floor.

Despite her waxen whiteness, she was more than beautiful—ethereal. Her lacquer hair was no more dark than her strange, long eyes, both set off by an exquisite robe of ancient style, as befitted a lady of noble blood.

When her hand touched that of the Prince he felt cold as ice. Involuntarily his own palm enclosed hers warmly. He did not let it go, but drawing her closer to him, unmindful of the assembled company, he tried to fathom the tragedy that seemed to lurk behind her impenetrable eyes. But, her head drooping above their hands, he beheld only the sheen of her glossy hair. Then she passed from his side to her uncle and her father.

Almost mechanically, his eyes never once relaxing their gaze from the face of his bride, the Prince went through the ceremony. After the service he tried to break the uncomfortable restraint. He proposed the health of the two noble though previously misguided families, whose union had now been so happily consummated. But his own cup was the only one held high. Gradually his hand fell from its elevation. He set the untasted sake down among the marriage-cups and sprang to his feet.

“Let us diffuse some merriment among us,” he cried, “for the sake of the gods and for our future peace and happiness. Such undue solemnity bodes ill for our honorable future.”

The samurai Shimadzu stepped forward, facing him fairly.

“My lord and prince,” he said, “I have this moment given the signal for a courier to hasten immediately to Choshui to acquaint my bitterest enemy with the tidings of the marriage of his heir to my insignificant daughter.”

The Prince smiled, despite his uneasiness.

“Surely, my lord,” he said, “you make a goodly new and honorable custom. What! an announcement, perchance an invitation for one’s enemy! That is well, for we have overturned all false maxims relating to vengeance against an enemy. We have buried our wrongs in a union of love, and embrace our enemies as friends.”

“With august humility,” said the samurai, coldly, “I would suggest that your highness’s assurance of our embrace is premature.”

“Premature! What, and this my marriage day!”

“Your marriage day may be a source of woe to your proud house.”

“Well, that is so,” agreed the Prince, thoughtfully. “Nevertheless,” he added, cheerfully, “my honorable father becomes more lenient with the years. Moreover, he has but to behold his new daughter to forget all else save the fortune the gods have bestowed upon us.”

“Be assured your father shall never behold her,” said the samurai, with incisive fierceness.

“What is that?”

“You have heard.”

“But I do assure you that my marriage, though it may provoke the momentary anger of my father, will never debar my lady wife from her position in our household. You forget that my honored parent is very old, and I shall soon have the honor of becoming Prince of Mori in my own right. I shall then have no lord to deprive me of my rights, even if I had disregarded the law.”

“You may as well be made aware of the fact at once,” said Shimadzu, “that no blood of mine shall ever mingle with that of the Mori!”

“I do not understand your honorable speech. Has not our august bloods just now become united?”

“Only by the law, my lord.”

“Well—?”

“My daughter, your highness, shall never accompany her Mori husband to his home.”

“Very well, then. I will remain here with her. I am quite satisfied to renounce all my worldly ambitions and possessions for her sake, if such is the command of her august father,” and the Prince bowed to his father-in-law in the most filial and affable manner.

“If you remain here you will not be permitted to live.”

A low cry, half moan, came from the new Princess of Mori, who lay against her uncle’s breast. Keiki turned to her at that cry. He was seized with a foreboding of events to come. Again he turned to the samurai.

“Will it please you, honored father-in-law, to speak more plainly to me?”

“Very well. This marriage, your highness, has been consummated not for the purpose of uniting a pair of lovers, but to fulfil a pledge which was made to one who was murdered by your parent—a pledge of vengeance.”

“But I cannot perceive how this is accomplished,” said the Prince, now pale as Wistaria.

“You have married an Eta girl.”

“I am aware of that,” said the Prince, somewhat proudly.

“I have not finished,” said Shimadzu. “Are you aware that you are at present under sentence of death?”

The Prince made a contemptuous motion.

“By order of the bakufu (shogunate). Yes, I am aware of the fact.”

“Very well. I am the executioner!”

“You!”

“It was I who caused your arrest, and afterwards brought you hither with the intention of executing you.”

A flood of horrible thoughts rushed across the Prince’s mind, bewildering him. As if to press them back, he clasped his hands to his head. Shimadzu continued in his cold and monotonous voice:

“After your arrest, it was brought to my attention that a more subtle revenge against your parent could be gained by marrying you into that very class of people so despised by your father, and forcing you to become guilty of the same offence for which I was exiled.”

Stirred as he now was, Keiki’s faith in Wistaria still remained unshaken. That her father had had a hand in betraying him he was assured, but he could not yet recognize in the deed the delicate hand of the woman he loved.

“Through the agency of my daughter,” went on the samurai, “I was soon able to learn sufficient concerning the workings of the Imperialist party of which you are the head—”

“The Imperialist party!” repeated the Prince, and he bounded towards the samurai with the cry of a wounded animal. His hand sprang to his hip, where his sword had been restored to its sheath.

“You—you!” he shouted. “It was you who betrayed me—who—”

“You are augustly wrong,” said the samurai, moving not an inch, despite the close proximity and menacing attitude of the Prince. “You honorably betrayed yourself!”

“I!”

“Certainly. To her.” He indicated, without naming, the Lady Wistaria.

Slowly, painfully, driven by the goading words of the father, the blazing, burning eyes of the husband sought Wistaria, there to rest upon her while infinite horror found mirror in his countenance. Motionless thus he stood.

Wistaria, braced for a shock she could not meet, leaned against her uncle, whose head bent over her. The Lady Evening Glory smiled, as one who delights in the soul of a cat. Calm, satisfied, unmoved, remained Shimadzu. Keiki’s eyes bulged from their sockets, his mouth gaped open. At last one word burst from his lips, but it was as eloquent as though he had uttered a thousand.

“Thou!”

Her head sank low. He recoiled a step. But with entranced horror he continued to gaze at her. Her face was like marble, out of which her dark eyes stared as though made of polished, glazed china. And as he gazed, terrible thoughts and remembrances rushed upon Keiki, overpowering, weakening, paralyzing him. After a long, immovable silence he leaned slowly forward until their faces, close together, were on a level.

“It is true?” he whispered, hoarsely. “Speak! Speak!”

“It is true,” she replied, in a voice so small and faint that it seemed far away.

His sword leaped out of his scabbard. He raised it as if to strike her down. But his hand fell to his side. Then he spoke, in a hoarse, fearful voice:

“The gods may forgive thee. I, never!”

With that he was gone from the chamber. They heard the clash of his sword as it touched the stone pavement, then the sound of his flying feet, loud at first, and then dying away into the silence.

XXI

HAVING fulfilled his purpose in life, the Shimadzu was ready, eager, for his own self-immolation. He had prepared for this event with strict observance of an elaborate etiquette, just as he, a samurai, would have prepared for any event of importance in his life.

The little house had been thoroughly cleansed and whitewashed. Fresh mats of straw had been laid upon the floor, and the walls were recovered. To admit the sunshine, and the air of the out-door world, the windows were thrown wide apart.

Shimadzu produced an ancient chest, from which he brought forth rare and costly old garments, emblazoned with the crests of a proud family, and a pair of very long swords. The hilts were of black lacquer. The guard, ferule, cleats, and rivets were richly inlaid and embossed in rare metals. But the beautiful blades were the parts which shone out in their noble, classic beauty. They were extremely narrow, glossy, and brittle as icicles. The very sight of them would have awakened a feeling of heroism and awe in the bosom of one less alive to what they signified than Shimadzu. They were, in fact, two swords which, belonging to a hundred ancestors of Shimadzu, had been used only in the most glorious service.

“The girded sword is the soul of the samurai,” and Shimadzu muttered an ancient saying. It had been long since he lost the right to wear them through his marriage into the Eta class, and now he regarded them with such intense emotion that fierce tears blinded his eyesight.

Reverently, tenderly, he lifted them to a place upon a white table before a shrine in his own chamber. Then with a low groan he prostrated himself before them, rather than the figure of the Daibutsu, which placidly rested upon the small throne.

In his inmost soul, this samurai felt he had done a good and righteous thing in achieving his vengeance, even though the innocent were sacrificed. Trained as he had been in the harsh school of the samurai, in which self-denial, contempt for pleasure and gain, scorn of death or physical hurt, and the righteous vengeance upon an enemy were esteemed virtues, he was steeled against all fear and pain. His conscience was satisfied with itself.

After his silent prayer, he rose to his feet very calmly and with a degree of solemnity. He had gathered fresh strength from his prayer. The ceremony of hari-kari he performed with grave dignity and punctiliousness.

First of all, he gently lifted the two swords and held them in the sun, their knightly significance strong in his mind. One was to use against all enemies of his lord, the other held ever in readiness to turn upon himself in atonement for fault or faintest suspicion of dishonor, or, as in his case, when a duty has been fulfilled and honorable death is desired as a crowning end.

The samurai Shimadzu was without a lord, or, rather, he disdained and cursed the one under whom he should have served. Hence he broke into a dozen pieces one of the two swords, spurning the glittering pieces with his foot.

Then silently he disrobed to the waist. Very slowly and precisely he pressed the sword into his body so that he might lose none of the pain, which he would have scorned to resist. No moan escaped his lips. No muscle of his face quivered.

As the sword sank deeper his brain whirled with the dizziness of nausea, but, still stiff and relentless, his arm obeyed the will of his soul, even continuing mechanically to do so when his head had fallen backward into semi-unconsciousness. He was one hour and a half in dying. No words could describe the excruciating nature of such pains. Certainly, as a samurai, his was a fitting end.

Such was the nature of this people that to his friends and relatives his act was regarded as an honorable and admirable thing. Had he faltered in its accomplishment they would have urged him to the deed, entreating him to save himself from the stigma of dishonor which would otherwise smirch his good name.

The following day a large number of Catzu samurai and vassals marched through the Eta settlement and ascended the small hill upon which stood the house of the public executioner. The body of the samurai was carried with the utmost respect and reverence from the Eta house, whence a train, bearing it in due state, departed for Catzu.

From the Eta house the Lady Wistaria, too, was carried. Her train was even more like a funeral procession than that of her father; for those who carried her norimon and who followed in its wake had long been her personal attendants and servitors. Now, because of their love for her, they wept at almost every step of the journey.

The two mournful processions left the Eta settlement side by side, but their different destinations led to their parting company at the base of the hill. The one carrying the dead samurai turned in the direction of Catzu. There, fitting ceremonies were to be given to the departed soul of Shimadzu, after which he would be interred in the mortuary hall of his ancestors.

The train of the Lady Wistaria turned to the south, travelling many miles over bare and uninhabited regions, over plains, past hamlets and small towns and villages, on towards the mountains of the south.

While the last rays of the setting sun were still illumining the west, the cortege of the new Princess of Mori entered a forest of evergreen pines. When it emerged, the darkening sky had deepened its colors until a melancholy calm wrapped the land in an effulgent glow. The moon had risen on high and was shimmering out its holy light. The earth, reflecting its gleam, seemed a tableau of silent silver.