Iriya alone moved in the silence of her daughter's spirit. The two women grew very close, though no spoken word was used to show it.
Wednesday, the marriage day, arrived softly. Yuki neither dreaded nor welcomed it. She had not seen Prince Haganè since the night he took her answer. Quite a number of her parents' relatives, some from distant provinces, came in and gathered in the house to bid the bride farewell, to throw, laughingly, the dried peas after her, to sweep the abandoned dwelling to its farthest corner, and light a bonfire at the gate when she passed through.
Yuki, in her white bridal robes and concealing veil of white silk, thin in texture but stiffened in a way that brought it into angular folds about her shoulders, stepped alone into a new jinrikisha. Tetsujo and Iriya, in a double vehicle, followed. These three alone went to Tabata, where they met a corresponding party of the same small number, Prince Haganè, his nearest male relative, the old Duke Shirota, and young Princess Sada-ko, the old duke's granddaughter.
Haganè was unmistakably preoccupied. His thoughts did not attach themselves with ease to things or persons. He had an air of relief when the short ceremony came to an end. Yuki now changed her white robe for a dark-hued silk, superb in texture, the gift, according to Japanese etiquette, of her husband. A hairdresser was in readiness to change forever the wide loops of a girl's coiffure into the more elaborate structure of a young matron. The Princess Sada-ko fluttered near, talking prettily and congratulating herself on the acquisition of a new relative. Yuki scarcely heard her. She felt almost nothing. As the last touch came, the thrusting-in of a great tortoise-shell pin, she shuddered very slightly, thinking of that ivory one broken with Pierre Le Beau on the moonlit prow of a ship.
With a great clattering and stamping the Haganè coach of ceremony drew up to the entrance-door. Magnificent gray horses in new trappings snorted impatience to be off. Haganè stepped in without a word to Yuki, who, at a nudge from the little princess, meekly followed. The domestic retinue fell on its knees in the doorway and along the pebbled drive. Haganè gave the order, "Shimbashi," waved a hand abstractedly, and the equipage dashed away.
The short railway journey was made practically in silence. Haganè said once, as if by way of explanation, "Important and somewhat alarming news has come by secret wire to-day. It is necessary for me to ponder over it."
"Honorably do not concern your august mind with a person so insignificant," said Yuki. Far from resenting his silence, the girl was thankful to be left to herself. She watched the scenes outside with eyes at first vague and unintelligent, but which soon gained a soft, increasing brightness. Earth was waking from its long sleep. Yuki felt what many of her own and other races have in such crises felt,—a gratitude to nature that human grief is given no part in it. The grass still is busy, small waxen blossoms lift the leaves of a fallen year, no matter what men may suffer. In moments of keen personal bereavement, when the soul is dazed and blinded by the wonder of its agony, a certain resentment comes. Like the Ayrshire poet we cry, "How can ye be so fresh and fair?" But such grief was not yet Yuki's. Her emotion still partook more of bewilderment than loss. Pierre was not dead. He might yet be happy, happier than with her. This thought brought no personal sting. Hers was not a nature for jealousy.
Because of her marriage, through this stern, grave man who sat beside her, she was to be given her opportunity for loyal service. Mistrust of self, apprehensions that mocked and taunted her, a certain shrinking from responsibilities so thickly heaped, rushed inevitably to her mind. On the other hand she had for guidance his great spirit of untarnished patriotism; she had vindicated to her parents all filial obligation, and springtime peeped at her from among the hills.
She saw that a thousand nameless, beloved little flowers traced with bright enamelling the leaden dykes of fields. Seedling rice brimmed with gold-green, small, separate pools. Straw-shod farmers trampled, one by one, the rotting stubs of last year's crop into the slime of fields to be new-planted. On low-thatched huts the old leaves of the roof-lilies fed a springing growth. Everywhere decay passed visibly into re-birth. So, thought little Yuki, "The very sorrow I have endured shall feed my new resolves."
At the small Kamakura station jinrikishas were awaiting them, accompanied by two persons, an old man and a comely woman of the peasant class, whom Yuki rightly took for family servants. They prostrated themselves upon the cement floor in an excess of demonstration, whispering old-fashioned phrases of congratulation and of welcome. Haganè came back for an instant to things around him.