HE Lord of Catzu received his son’s friend with hospitality dictated by his fat and good-humored nature, beseeching him to consider the Catzu possessions as his own. Keiki (as he had called himself), on fire to make use of the advantage he had now gained at the outset, was met by two unexpected obstacles.
In the first place, the Lady Wistaria was hedged about by an almost insurmountable wall of etiquette and form. Though the lover blessed all the gods for the privilege of being in her presence each day, yet, impetuous, warm-blooded, and ardent, he could not but chafe at the distance and the silence which seemed impassable between them.
Wistaria, he thought, might just as well have been a twinkling star in the heavens above him as to be placed at one end of the guest-room, her lips sealed in maidenly silence, while at the other end, in the place of honor, must sit he, the august guest, inwardly the burning lover. Between them interposed her honorable relatives and certain members of her uncle’s household, separating the lovers with their extravagant politeness and words of gracious compliment and hospitality.
In the second place, the pilot upon whom he had relied for safe conduct through the icy forms which kept him from his mistress had deserted him perfidiously. Toro, the reckless and foolhardy, his imagination fed by the daring and sang-froid of the Mori clansman, his own heart aflame with as deep a passion as his friend’s, had borrowed his dress and departed for Choshui, there to risk all chance of danger with the bravery, but without, alas! the wit, of the Mori courtier.
To offset these two hardships, the lovers saw a gift sent by the gods in the indisposition of the Lady Evening Glory. After the long and tedious journey from the capital, the lady, who was of a delicate constitution, retired to her apartments with a malady of the head and tooth. In point of fact, the Lady Evening Glory suffered from neuralgia. The lovers prayed that her illness might be long and lingering, though Wistaria, having besought her to keep to her bed as long as possible that relapse might be avoided, tempered her prayer with a petition to her favorite god that her aunt’s illness might be unattended with pain.
With the Lady Evening Glory, the vigilant mentor of Wistaria, safely out of the way, the girl found no cause for despair. This was the reason she returned her lover’s pleading and ofttimes reproachful glances with smiles, which, but for the joy of seeing them, he would have thought heartless. The joy of Wistaria’s smile almost compensated for the pain of her lover’s poignant surmise that her heart had no pity for the woes of her adorer.
And, indeed, at this time there was little else in the girl’s heart save a singing joy, a rippling flutter of new emotions and thrills, which she, too innocent as yet to recognize their full import, cared only to welcome with delight, to encourage, to foster and enjoy to the uttermost.
Between Wistaria and her uncle there was utmost confidence and love. The young girl occupied that place in his heart which would have been held by the daughter denied him by the gods. The mantling flush, the ever-shining eyes, now bright with joy that would overflow, now moist with the unbidden tears that spring to the eyes when the heart is disturbed with an emotion more sweet than expression; these—the change which young love alone can produce in a maiden—he was quick to perceive.
The Lord Catzu’s own marriage had been most romantic, and if his lady had lived down frigidly to the world, her husband at least had retained his sentimental remembrance of the adventurous escapades attending it.
Such were the opportunities of life to the daimio of a province at peace that, to all outward appearances, Catzu was too indolent, too listlessly, luxuriously lazy and preoccupied with his own pleasures to observe his niece’s condition of heart. But the Lord Catzu, with all his placidity, was astute. Beneath his lazy eyelids his own small eyes missed little that passed before him.