CHAPTER IV.
Under such surroundings grew up the fairest maiden to be found in the province of Kuwana. All who had seen her were unanimous in according this tribute to O Tetsu. The people often wondered how such a beautiful, lovely being could spring from such a coarse, knotted stock, even when her mother’s fair, delicate nature was grafted upon it. There are many points of beauty for which the daughters of Japan have always been favored beyond those of most other nations. In no country probably will there be found so many possessing those delicate hands and feet, that gloriously beautiful neck, and those bright, shining eyes which seem to be the birth-right of the maidens of the Land of the Rising Sun. All these advantages and many others were found to perfection in O Tetsu; and she added to them a grace of movement and a witchery of manner which caused the poets of the court to lament the poverty of their language, because it failed to supply them with adequate terms to describe all these endearing qualities to their satisfaction. Fair and fresh and beautiful as a summer morn, graceful as a Japanese lily, with wonderful eyes, lustrous and brilliant, and shining with a peculiar humid brightness which suffused or rather covered them as if with a refulgent and yet a transparent veil, and with a voice whose sweet melody, if you were young and impressionable, lingered in your ears for days and weeks after you heard it, O Tetsu might well lay claim to be considered peerless throughout the land. Her hands and feet might have belonged to a child half her age, and her form was slight and delicate; yet she was no tender, hothouse plant, but in reality strong and robust. When on cold, frosty winter mornings, the ground being covered with snow, she walked out with her bare feet thrust into high-heeled getas, her rich, warm blood mantling neck and face, she looked a picture of physical health, and formed a striking contrast to many damsels whose coarser build did not prevent them from shivering, and showing hands and feet and noses that were blue and ugly with the cold. In spite of her generally mild and demure looks, there was something of her father’s nature in her after all,—a certain imperious way, which, rarely displayed, might have been taken for a faint, a very faint, counterpart of the old smith’s headstrong obstinacy. There was some slight resemblance between them also in outward looks,—a resemblance in general hardly conceivable, but which became apparent in O Tetsu when her eyes were momentarily closed. Then her small mouth and chin showed its resolute cast, and the whole outline of the face was not lacking in a certain determined look, which, as shrewd observers said, would have developed into something of a temper if circumstances had favored it. All these latent traits, however, were not visible, or failed to be noticed, when you saw her eyes—those beautiful eyes, with their unfathomable depth of bright, roguish tenderness. Although her father doted on her, yet the stern, fierce nature of his strong and powerful individuality rendered disobedience or self-willed pertinacity an impossibility, and the girl’s feminine graces were thus saved from being marred by tendencies which a different education might have aggravated into faults.
LANDING-PLACE AT KUWANA.
Young as O Tetsu was, offers of marriage,—some of them of a kind to satisfy very exacting demands on the score of birth, family, position, and personal accomplishments,—had not been wanting. There were those who would have wooed her for her father’s reputed wealth; there were others, and probably the greater number, who were attracted mostly by the charms of her person and manners; while not a few of high position and noble birth would have been content to give her their name if she had possessed neither beauty nor wealth, being actuated by the sole hope of getting one of her father’s swords as a dowry. The social taint attaching to her escutcheon on account of her reputed Eta mother, the mere suspicion of which in the case of most others would have been an all-powerful objection, not to be outweighed by the possession of wealth, was disregarded in the daughter of this clever artisan. In her it would have been condoned, even if it had stood out as a well-known and established fact. This, however, was not the case, as it was after all but a vague report, which anybody who chose might disbelieve. The lovers of O Tetsu looked for no other reason to ignore its existence but their own desire and inclination; while the smith’s fame, his reputed influence, which it was known would carry great weight if he chose to exert it, and above all the secret superstitious awe which he inspired, were so many deterrent influences to prevent people from talking above their breath of what might be distasteful to him if it should reach his ears.
A RONIN.
This fear and awe had its origin in another of those rumors which arise no one knows how or when, and which sometimes, having a substratum of truth, or assuming its semblance from accidental circumstances, come to be accepted as undoubted facts. In this instance it had long since been so accepted. It was said that in the manufacture of his swords the smith needed newly-shed human blood. The age was superstitious enough to believe that such a procedure correctly carried out would entail marvellous results; and the wonderful excellence of Muramasa’s productions favored this reasoning. There were sufficient grounds beside to make such a belief plausible. The smith’s weird appearance and manner, and the dreary, lonely character of the neighborhood wherein he lived, had undoubtedly contributed to this end. Moreover, the dead bodies which were found so often near his house,—much more frequently, it was said, than ever before,—whether they had belonged to samurai slain in brawl or duel, merchants robbed and killed for their money or beggars probably cut down from mere wanton lust, were always cut and slashed in a terrible manner, leaving hardly any blood in the body, while traces of it were often found suspiciously near the smith’s dwelling. Nobody thought of accusing the latter of sordid motives, and his solitary life prevented him from having many enemies. It was only the blood he wanted to temper his steel; and when the time came that he needed it, and no accident supplied him, then, as people said, he took care to furnish an accident himself. If such had been the case, known and proven, it would probably have entailed no unpleasant consequences upon the smith, unless some one, specially interested and high in authority, had chosen to take the matter in hand. Human life was held cheap enough, while good swords were rare; and if it required human blood to make one, a few merchants and vagrants could well be spared. Muramasa himself was doubtless aware of this report, and was even believed by some to encourage it. At least, whether true in any degree or altogether a fabrication, he never by word or sign contradicted it; he probably had enough worldly wisdom to know that the atmosphere of dread mystery in which, by common report, he thus lived, created a spell which could not but enhance the value of the products of his marvellous handicraft.