When you know that you have done your best,--that but for some one unforeseen and ineradicable speck your carefully-wrought blade would be faultless, a shimmering masterpiece--it is vastly vexatious for people whom you despise, although they wear the aureole, to go on ungenerously drivelling anent that one undeniable blemish. Nara, as he said, had endured a great deal at the hard hand of Hojo, but to sit calmly any longer under the futile reproaches of the Holy One was beyond his stock of that patience he was so fond of recommending to others.
Moreover, is not the putting aside of what is past and unpleasant a principle approved of by sages? What is done is done. Even after the late scene, wherein a brutal keeper disported himself among his animals, and departed triumphing, all was not lost, The Fountain had been compelled to imbibe another sip of a nauseous draught with which he was so familiar, that surely it did not signify, at any rate, it should be the last His faithful Nara promised it. How the never-sufficiently-to-be-accursed Hojo had ever discovered the approaching advent of cohorts was a puzzle. But the cohorts were near by this time, and they must even make an open stand against the tyrant, since the scheme of treachery had failed. He, the domineering Hojo, would write angry and imperious letters to the approaching daimios, bidding them begone; but in the name of the Holy One letters could also be sent--secretly, of course--exhorting them to ride all the quicker, since the situation had become acute.
"I will gird my old sword again, despite my many winters," Nara concluded pompously. "Dost think that because my hair is white my heart is frozen? Under the snows of Shirané-San and Asama-Yama smoulder the hidden fires. This man's father has immured three Emperors, and he himself is preparing to depose a fourth. He has insulted me, and broken my daughter's heart. A little craft--a very little more--and the crest of the despot is laid low."
The hapless Mikado suffocated. Tears of impotent wrath welled from his august eyelids. Cowardice and bluster to the end, and broken reeds to lean on, while he drained the nauseous cup! Verily the banished Emperors were to be envied. The young man rose, and retired to his inner chamber, and lay prone with moans in darkness.
CHAPTER XV.
[WILL BUDDHA SPEAK?]
Meanwhile affairs at Tsu were not prospering. Sampei, tossed like a shuttlecock, formed, as usual, a dozen resolutions daily, and broke them all. At one moment he was for the flight of O'Tei from the doomed castle--become now a hell of untramelled debauchery--and her installation with his mother at the temple. There she would be in sanctuary, whence even her husband durst not wrest her. But then what a triumph for O'Kikú! He felt that O'Tei would never consent to a step which would be a tacit admission of defeat, for she was a Nara of pure blood, with all the pride of her race. No. She must stop where she was, and await the unrolling of events; and yet what a life was hers, compelled to remain much in her bower, lest she should be insulted by O'Kikú or the braves. As Nara hoped, the evil germ was working inwardly. A regret rose within the mind of Sampei which scorched and blackened it. Is a faithful clansman and an honest man ever justified in turning on his chief? Before there was no question of it: now he was in more than doubt. May a brother ever be pardoned for taking his brother's life? Cases of fratricide were common enough, as Nara had hinted--there were precedents galore--but then the ruling feature of Sampei's character had always been loyal honesty. The gods in their wisdom had set over him certain superiors. What would be said to him when the end came, and accounts were totted up upon the abacus, if he had rebelled? Buddha, frowning, would demand to know how he dared move out of his place, arrogantly assuming to be the wiser.
His first duty was to the head of his house: surely there should be no doubt whatever about that. But what if another urgent duty had been imposed by his heart--an imperative duty, clashing with the first? There lay the rub, a problem beyond the solving of the simple General. And since the shocking suggestion had been spread by the wily geisha that there were unholy bonds 'twixt him and her whom it was only too plain he loved, the situation had become so strained as to fill him with foreboding and dismay. To save her fair fame ought he indeed to go? To leave her a helpless waif on this whirlpool of black wickedness was out of the question. And yet how was she benefited by his staying, since he dared not approach without compromising her? So miserable did the poor man feel, racked and torn by a difficulty with which he was incapable of coping, that the light was dark to him, his heart stone cold. He knew himself as weak as she, a ball at the foot of Fate; and so he wandered aimless and disconsolate, hearing and seeing nothing, caring not what befell, waiting--as the rudderless do--to see what would happen next.
Oh, heart of man, centre of suffering! When one is said to be heartless, 'tis looked upon as a reproach, instead of a matter for gratulation! The heart of man! 'Tis barely enough for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficiently large to satisfy its lust, its greed, its ambition--and how it suffers!
When he sailed so blythely for Corea with his enthusiastic army, how halcyon was the world to Sampei; what wonders he was going to perform; what a career of ambition was before him. And now, ambition was dead. Life had become Endurance. His candid spirit was warped by suspicion. He, once so open and trustful, saw in everything a hidden meaning; in every event an occult snare.