“All is well. All is well,” almost sobbingly chanted the gateman. “I pray you enter the shiro. There you will see for yourself.”
Gonji turned a bit uneasily toward the house, then halted abruptly.
“I read in your face,” he said, “a tale of some calamity to my family. Already I know of my father’s glorious sacrifice for Tenshi-sama”—bowing as he spoke the Mikado’s name—“for I was with my father at the end. So if it is that—but no, there is something else troubling you, Kiyo. I know you too well not to read your face. Is it my mother?”
His voice broke slightly, and for the first time in years he was conscious of a sense of tenderness toward his mother. She had been the main source of all his misery; but she loved him. This Gonji knew, despite all.
Again Kiyo hastened to reassure him, this time eagerly and proudly.
“Iya, master. Thy mother is in excellent health. Happy, moreover, as never before, with the honorable Lord Taro, thy son, embraced within her arms!”
The young man was staring at him now strangely. He seemed unable to speak or move. A look as of almost troubled awakening was in the face of Gonji. It was as if a thought, long thrust aside, had suddenly recurred to him. During all these agonizing months, when he had wandered about from city to city, he had been possessed with but one idea—the finding of his wife. Now, suddenly, the gateman’s words came to him as a very revelation. Strange that he had not even thought upon this matter since he had left Japan. He was a father!
“It is—possible!” he gasped. “I have a—”
“Son! Gloriously a son, master!” cried Kiyo, grinning joyously.
The young man continued to stare almost incredulously at the gateman, but in his face was no reflection of the joy visible in that of the faithful retainer. He was overwhelmed with the sense of a new emotion whose very sweetness tore at his heart, and brought unbidden tears to his eyes.