“We would speak with her,” said Yoritomo, pushing back his hat until his pale aristocratic face could be seen in the soft lantern light.
The landlord, who had been about to turn us off, hesitated and answered in a more respectful tone: “The most famous dancer of Yedo enjoys the favor of daimios. How then can I bid her come to attend those who seem no more than Yamabushi?”
Yoritomo drew a sheet of paper from his bosom, and taking his brush pen from the case at his girdle, wrote a few small ideographs in the classical Chinese character. Swift as were his strokes, the first letter was scarcely drawn before the host was kowtowing, forehead to earth. He rose, touched the finished writing to his brow, and clattered off on his high wooden clogs across the fairyland of his garden.
“You have declared yourself!” I exclaimed.
“To him, no. My manner of writing convinced him that I am of high rank. But I wrote only a quotation from one of the ancient poems. Even if he is learned enough to read it—”
“Will this dancer then grasp your meaning?”
“Kohana is one of the higher class of geisha called shirabyoshi,—one of the superior artists. She is of samurai blood, and the old geisha who bought her in childhood, and trained her after the manner of geishas, gave her the highest of women’s culture. Before I left Yedo I bought the girl’s freedom from service. She was then in her eighteenth year.”
“You bought her freedom!” I murmured. “You who look so coldly upon women!”
“I could do no more for her,—and no less. We loved, but love cannot bind a true samurai when duty calls. I vowed to give my life to the service of the Mikado and Dai Nippon. To have lingered with her after that would have been despicable.”
I sat silent, reflecting upon the strange customs of this queer people and the hidden depths in the nature of my friend. All my intimacy with him, backed by close study of Kämpfer and Siebold, had failed to prepare me for the bizarre contrasts and impressions of the mysterious land of Nippon.