Without concluding also this sentence or changing his attitude, the puzzled daimyo, still blindly unconscious of his own predicament, but bitterly alive to the probability of Hidenagas speedy annihilation, turned to Yodogima, shamefully betraying, as he had never done before, the inner hopelessness of a hotly contested, fiercely grinding will determination. Her head reeled—it seemed as if all were lost—but the body responded, revealing no trace of the terrible battle she fought: on higher grounds than he had conceived or Ieyasu felt—in consequence of dreaming, no less endangered by waiting. Forced and beaten, Hideyoshi could bear the suspense no longer.
Is it possible—are you—in fact—a stoic? You appear to be unmoved—unresolved—yet—Ieyasu by retreating has won—has proven himself—to be—a greater man than—no, no; I understand; know how it is to be tricked! Yodogima, I have no fine speech to make or promises to render; to you, Ieyasu owes it that he lives: an humbler admirer, only that he can better respect.—Stay, you, courier; Hideyoshi goes.
CHAPTER X
Neither Hideyoshi, nor Yodogima, for the moment, took any pains to discover or to suspect the identity of that last message-bearer; though had either one observed at all only the dishevelled clothing he might have been induced to look underneath the mask, hiding too slenderly a timid, anxious face. It were enough for Yodogima to know that her lover had risen to first place in the estimation of an only rival: for Hideyoshi to realize once and for all that the price of Shibatas eldest daughter was to be something dearer than the lone bagatelle of a daimyos willing or the baser invocations of a traditional heritage.
Hideyoshi tore his way over the open road like mad. The vitalest opportunity of his life had been denied him, a victory snatched away that seemed almost within grasp, and he himself written down an ass at a time when his name should have been heralded throughout the empire as invincible—and by the doing of a woman.
Shame be upon they who think themselves sexed into heaven; it is might that makes us what we are—right or wrong, male or female, man or his kind. Then beware! threatened he, as the dust rolled in the wake of his ride toward the field.
Nor was Yodogima less conscious of a dawning respect for Hideyoshi. The knowing princess had expected harsher treatment, if not more subtle means, at the hands of her captor; who had, after all, proven himself a respecter of ability if not an admirer of virtue; and what if he should vanquish Ieyasu and, in fact, carry out his ideas about total extermination? The very thought of such a possibility deadened every reason.
Esyo, too, had gone; she had devised less and reasoned more, conjured her sister ambitious and charged Hideyoshi with ungratefulness; she had witnessed, become conscious of the latters growing regard for Yodogima in the face of all that she had done to check it—to further her own designs—and now turned to a newly devised, though less hopeful, expediency: overcoming with difficulty the distance, soon found herself in the bosom of Ieyasus command; a crooked purpose put to straights, knowing no rest and once off, she did not lag so much, in fact reached her destination before Hideyoshi had sighted his.