CHAPTER XVI
ON a day in the season of greatest heat, a few months after the going of Lord Saito Gonji to the front, there staggered up the tortuous and winding pathway, which climbed the mountain-side to where the House of Slender Pines rested as on a cliff, a curious figure. She was garbed in the conventional dress of the geisha, and the burning sun, beating down upon the little figure, showed the gold of her wide obi and the glittering vermilion of her kimono.
Something bound to the woman’s neck and back seemed to crush her almost double beneath its weight, and she clung weakly to the stumps of tree and bush as she made her way along.
It seemed almost, to the geishas sitting in the cool shade of the pavilion, that she dragged herself along on her hands and knees.
One ceased strumming upon the samisen, and a dancer, idly illustrating a few new gestures to the admiring apprentices, stopped in the middle of a movement.
Omi suddenly screeched and caught at the sleeve of the dancer. No one moved or spoke. They stood dumbfounded, staring with unbelieving eyes at the Spider, as she crept up the last height and dropped in silent exhaustion in their midst. There, with the glowing sun beating mercilessly down upon her, entangled in her glimmering gown, she lay like a great dead butterfly.
There was a stir among the geishas. Eyes met eyes in meaning, shocked glances; but still, from custom, they were voiceless.
Suddenly the little Omi began to run about like one bereft of her senses. One moment she knelt by her former mistress; the next she sought to awaken the chaperon, shaking and pounding that enormously stout and somnolent lady. Several maids now joined her, and they ran about in panic-stricken circles, uncertain what to do. Matsuda was absent. The poor, mindless Okusama was indoors, playing and talking with her countless dolls, quite oblivious of all about her. Should they go to her? Would she understand?