A hush had fallen upon the gardens. Almost it seemed as if the tiny feet of the dancer stirred not at all. Yet, with imperceptible advances, she moved nearer and nearer to her fascinated audience. Above her flimsy gown of sheerest veiling, which sprang like a web on all sides and above her, her face shone with its marvelous beauty and allurement. Her lips were apart, smiling, coaxing, teasing; and her eyes, wide and very large, seemed to seek over the heads of her audience for the one who should prove her prey. It was the final motion of the dance of the Spider, the seeking for, the finding, the seizing of her imaginary victim. Now the Spider’s eyes had ceased to wander. They were fixed compellingly upon those of the Lord Saito Gonji.
He had arisen to his feet, and with a half-audible exclamation—a sound of an indrawn sigh—he advanced toward the dancer. For a moment, breathlessly, he stood close beside her. The subtle odor of her perfumed hair and body stole like a charm over his senses. Her sleeve fluttered against his hand for but the fraction of a moment, yet thrilled and tormented him. He looked at the Spider with the eyes of one who sees a new and radiant wonder. Then darkness came rudely between them. The geisha’s face vanished with the light. He was standing alone, staring into the darkness, his father’s voice droning meaninglessly in his ear.
CHAPTER II
HER real name was as poetical as the one she was known by was forbidding and repelling. Moonlight, it was; though all the gay world which hovers about a famous geisha, like flies over the honey-pot, knew her solely as the “Spider.”
“Spider” she was called because of the peculiar dance she had originated. It was against all classical precedents, but of so exceptional a character that in a night, a single hour, as it were, she found herself from a humble little apprentice the most celebrated geisha in Kioto, that paradise of geishas.
It was a day of golden fortune for Matsuda, who owned the girl. She had been bound to his service since the age of seven with bonds as drastic as if the days of slavery still existed.
Harsh, cunning, even cruel to the many girls in his employ, Matsuda had yet one vulnerable point. That was his overwhelming affection for the geisha he had married, and she was afflicted with a malady of the brain. Some said it was due to the death of her many children, all of whom had succumbed to an infectious disease. From whatever misfortune, the gentle Okusama, as they called her in the geisha-house, was at intervals blank-minded. Still she, the harmless, gentle creature, was loved by the geishas; and, as far as it lay in her power, she was their friend, and often saved them from the wrath of Matsuda. It was into her empty bosom the little Moonlight had crept and found a warm and loving home. With a yearning as deep as though the child were her own, the wife of Matsuda watched over the child. It was under her tutelage that Moonlight learned all the arts of an accomplished geisha. In her time the wife of Matsuda had been very famous, too, and no one knew better than she, soft of mind and witless as she was at times, the dances and the songs of the geisha-house.
Matsuda had watched with some degree of irritation, not unmixed with a peculiar jealousy, his wife’s absorption in the tiny Moonlight. He did not approve of gentle treatment toward a mere apprentice. It was only by harsh measures that a girl could properly learn the severe profession. Later, when she had mastered all the intricate arts and graces, then, perhaps, one might prove lenient. It was no uncommon thing for a geisha to be pampered and spoiled, but an apprentice, never!