A hand touches my arm with the lightness of a perching butterfly. I turn and draw to me my wife, the Shogun’s daughter, and press my lips upon her coral mouth. So much I have retained of my tojin manners.
She withdraws her soft arms from about my neck, and glides back to kneel before her lord and clap her hands gently. There is no responsive “Hai!”—but through the entrance floats a graceful woman, bearing a blue-eyed baby girl. Little Azai is handed to her mother, while Kohana San smiles the greeting she cannot speak, and kowtows to the master.
A sturdy boy of four rushes in to fling himself down before his august father in the required salute. But there is a light not altogether Nipponese in his lustrous black eyes as he springs up to tell of his war game with his playmates in the castle garden.
And O Setsu San? She still attends upon the Shogun’s daughter when not serving her lord and husband, the Swordmaster of Kagoshima, once known as Yuki the ronin. But of the august Prince of Owari and his quaint and dainty lady Tokiwa, who for a time I called father and mother,—from them I have been cut off as from the dead.
Kagoshima is far from Yedo, yet even Shimadzu Nariakira, Daimio of Satsuma, dare not whisper abroad the secret of my presence among his counsellors. For Keiki and old Rekko still plot and intrigue in the capital of my wife’s august brother, and in Kyoto the Son of Heaven still dwells in the Past, and in his eyes the hairy tojins are beasts and demons.
May Ama-terasu, bright Goddess of the Sun, soon illumine the night of Kyoto with her rays of truth!
THE END
[Transcriber’s Notes]
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.