“Yes; it is mine; I name him Hideyori; let lanterns be hung everywhere, proclaiming Hideyoshi’s successor; you are his rightful mother, and my sole support; believe me, Yodogima; I swear it.”

CHAPTER XX

With due promulgation, Hideyori’s advent occasioned upon the surface great rejoicing everywhere throughout the land. Especially were the tidings well received at Ozaka and thereabout: still more earnestly by the older of Hideyoshi’s immediate supporters—those captains who had fought side by side with him from obscurity to mastery; none among them had so forgotten his duty as to think of independent action or listen to a suggestion in contravention of the taiko; he had been their guidance, and upon his regeneration depended their welfare; the father at once became a god, and the son his natural prognosticator.

Quite different, however, with those forced or tolerated into submission. Ieyasu had not tried out his capabilities, and Ishida served only for a purpose. Neither had sown that others might reap: each had awaited the harvest as best suited his particular need or environment; and now, at last, dissension foreboded their several necessities. Both, therefore, sought without delay to strengthen either one his own conjectured position, in view of the taiko’s possible retirement.

“You have no need to make oath, Hideyoshi,” promised Yodogima, in answer to his further protestations; “my interests and your purpose within themselves make us but one. Command me.”

“Let some fitting entertainment be had; I have now an heir, peace is at home, and China, I am told, sends an envoy to crown me emperor; what greater joy could be?”

To this proposal Yodogima made no protest, in fact encouraged its doing, yet knew full well the purport and surmised an eagerness on the part of every daimyo—invited or not—to seize any opportunity to test underhandedly his influence or lay discreetly some self-bettered plan. The taiko had whipped them into subjection and she herself borne him a recognized successor, but would the nation accept an authority incapable of enforcing itself? Could individual powers be transmitted in the absence of personal prowess? In fact, were they a nation as yet? If not, then what, required?

These were some of the questions vitally confronting Yodogima at the very outset of her enlarged career, and she had answered each satisfactorily to herself: the husband’s declining whimsicalities, presumably more tolerable than impressive to others—in view of their several intentions and universal unpreparedness—should be made to promote not only a devoted life’s well earned vacation, but to attend as well the immediate requirements of those upon whose shoulders an unfinished work had certainly, if not rightfully, fallen. The taiko’s frivolities, therefore, had been, likely, not only permitted but undertaken, and the completion of the Fushima castle was made the occasion: no captain would refuse, nor could any daimyo have been kept away except by force; the first longed to do the master any honor, and the others to avail themselves of what they designed making an occasion for the feathering of their own nests, no matter when or where the chance. Yodogima had not been thought of, only as a mother, by any, excepting possibly two—one a daimyo, the other a bakufu—had not been contemplated as inevitably standing over like the sun emerging behind a receding storm.