If he could but believe that Moonlight was now in the House of Slender Pines! Yet his agents had insisted she had not returned to her former home: moreover, they had supported the contention of Ohano, that undoubtedly it was into some such resort that the unhappy outcast had finally been driven.
Upon a day when the inmates of the Yoshiwara of Kioto were upon their annual parade, when the city was swept by a paroxysm of patriotic enthusiasm over the return of the victorious troops, Saito Gonji, worn and wearied from his vain quest through many cities, returned at last to his home city.
The streets were in holiday dress. From every roof-tree and tower the sun-flag tossed its ruddy symbol in the air. The people ran through the streets as if possessed, now cheering the passing soldiers, now waving and shouting to the happy paraders, and all following, some taunting, some cheering the long line of courtezans of the Yoshiwara.
They marched in single file, their long, silken robes, heavily embroidered, held up by their maids, and accompanied by their diminutive, toddling apprentices, often little girls as young as six and seven.
Yet, small as they were, each was a miniature reproduction and understudy of her mistress, in her elaborate coiffure with its glittering ornaments (the geisha wears flowers), her obi tied in front, and the thick paste of paint laid lividly from brow to chin. Some day it would be their lot to step into the place of the ones they emulated, and, in turn, slaves would hold their trains and masters would exhibit them like animals in public cages.
Gonji followed the long train of courtezans for miles. Sometimes he would run ahead, and, walking backward, pass down the long line, scanning every face piercingly and letting not one escape his scrutiny. And, as he studied the faces of these “hell women,” as his countrymen had named them, for the first time Gonji forgot his beloved Moonlight. The words of the American officer he had met in the campaign in Manchuria came up vividly to his mind:
“No nation,” the American had said, “can honorably hold its head erect among civilized nations, no matter what its prowess and power, so long as its women are held in such bondage; so long as its women are bartered and sold, often by their own fathers, husbands, and brothers, like cattle.”
A great and illuminating light broke upon the tempest-tossed soul of the Lord Saito Gonji. He would erect an imperishable monument to the memory of his lost wife. She should be the inspiration for the most knightly act that had ever been performed in the history of his nation.
It should be his task to effect the abolishment of the Yoshiwara! He would devote his life to this one great cause, and never would he abandon it until he had succeeded. This, and the revision of the inhuman and barbarous laws governing divorce, should be his life-work.
He would show the ancestors that there were deeds even more worthy and heroic than those of the sword.