DAUGHTERS OF NIJO

“She did not speak to the attendant while she dined, but continued to stare before her through the open shoji”

DAUGHTERS OF NIJO

A ROMANCE OF JAPAN

BY

ONOTO WATANNA

AUTHOR OF “A JAPANESE NIGHTINGALE,” “THE WOOING OF WISTARIA,” “THE HEART OF HYACINTH,” ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND DECORATIONS

BY KIYOKICHI SANO

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & Co., Ltd.

1904

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1904,

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up, electrotyped, and published April, 1904. Reprinted April, 1904.

Norwood Press

J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.

Norwood. Mass., U.S.A.

Contents

Illustrations

DAUGHTERS OF NIJO

Daughters of Nijo

BEFORE THE STORY’S ACTION

IN the early part of the year of the Restoration there lived within the Province of Echizen a young farmer named Yamada Kwacho. Although he belonged only to the agricultural class, he was known and honored throughout the entire province, for at one time he had saved the life of the Daimio of the province, the powerful Lord of Echizen, premier to the shogunate.

In spite of the favor of the Daimio of the province, Yamada Kwacho made no effort to rise above the class to which he had been born. Satisfied with his estate, he was proud of his simple and honest calling. So the Lord of Echizen, having no opportunity of repaying the young farmer for his service, contented himself perforce with a promise that if at any time Yamada Kwacho should require his aid, he would not fail him.

Kwacho, therefore, lived happily in the knowledge of his prince’s favor; and since he possessed an excellent little farm which yielded him a comfortable living, he had few cares.

He had reached the age of twenty-five years before he began to cast about him for a wife. Because of his renown in the province, Kwacho might have chosen a maiden of much higher rank than his own; but, being of a sensible mind and nature, he sought a bride within his own class. He found her in the person of little Ohano, the daughter of a neighboring farmer. She was as plump, rosy, and pretty as is possible for a Japanese maiden. Moreover, she was docile and gentle by temperament, and had all the admirable domestic virtues attractive to the eye of a youth of the character of Yamada Kwacho.

Though their courtship was brief, their wedding was splendid, for the Prince of Echizen himself bestowed upon them gifts with all good wishes and congratulations. Life seemed to bear a more joyous aspect to Kwacho. He went about his work whistling and singing. All his field-hands and coolies knew him for the kindest of masters.

The young couple had not been married a month, when a great prince, a member of the reigning house, visited the Lord of Echizen in his province. Report had it that this royal prince was in reality an emissary from the Emperor, for at this time the country was torn with the dissensions of Imperialist and Bakufu. It was well known that the Daimio of Echizen owed his office of shogunate premier to the Mikado himself, and that he was secretly in sympathy with the Imperialists. Consequently there were great banquets and entertainments given in the Province of Echizen when a prince of the royal family condescended to visit the Mikado’s vassal, the Daimio of Echizen. The whole province wore a gala aspect, and the streets of the principal cities were constantly enlivened by the passing parades and cortèges of the retainers of the visiting prince.

Owing to the presence of his august guest, the Lord of Echizen was obliged to send a courier to Yedo with proper apologies for not presenting himself before the Shogun at this time. He showed his confidence in Kwacho by bestowing upon him the honor of this important mission.

The young farmer, while naturally loath to leave his young bride of a month, yet, mindful of the great honor, started at once for the Shogun’s capital. Thus Ohano was left at home alone.

Being but fifteen years old, she was fond of gayety, of music and dancing, and it was her dearest wish to visit the capital city of the province, that she might see the gorgeous parade of the nobles. With her husband gone, however, she was forced to deny herself this pleasure, and had to remain at home in seclusion under the charge of an elderly but foolish maid. Ohano became lonely and restless. She wearied of sitting in the house, thinking of Kwacho; and it was tiresome, too, to wander about the farm fields and watch the coolies and laborers. Ohano pined for a little of that excitement so precious to her butterfly heart. Much thought of the capital gayeties, and much conversation with the foolish maid, finally wrought a result.

Ohano would put on her prettiest and gayest of gowns to visit the capital alone, just as though she were a maiden and not a matron who should have had the company of her husband.

As the city was not a great distance away, they could use a comfortable kurumma which would hold them both. Four of the field coolies could be spared as kurumma carriers. In delight the foolish maid dressed her mistress, by this time all rosy with pleasurable excitement and anticipation. The adventure pleased them both, though the foolish mistress assured the foolish maid repeatedly that they would go but to the edge of the city. Thus they could see the great parade of the royal prince pass out of the city gates, for this was the day on which the prince was to leave Echizen and return to Kyoto. All his splendid retinue would accompany him. It was only once in a lifetime one was afforded the opportunity of such a sight, Ohano declared.

They started from the farm gleefully. All the way mistress and maid chatted and laughed in enjoyment. Before they had reached the edge of the city a countryman told them the royal cortège was even then passing through the city gates, and that they must leave the road in haste, for the parade would reach their portion of the highway in a few minutes.

The foolish maid suggested that they alight from the kurumma, that they might have a still better view of the parade. So after the maid the rosy-cheeked little bride, with her eyes dancing and shining, her red lips apart, her childish face all gleaming with pleased curiosity, swung lightly to the ground also.

They were just in time, for the royal parade had taken the road, and the outriders were already in view, so that the kurumma carriers were forced to drag their vehicle aside and fall upon their faces in the dust. The foolish maid, following their example, hid her face on the ground so that she lost sight of that she had come far to see. Ohano, however, less agitated than her servants, instead of prostrating herself at the side of the road, retired to a little bluff near the roadside. She thought she was far enough from the highway to be unseen; but as she happened to be standing on a sloping elevation, and her gay dress made a bright spot of color against the landscape, she was perfectly visible to such of the cortège as chanced to look in her direction.

Very slowly and leisurely the train proceeded. Nobles, samurai, vassals, retainers, attendants, the personal train of each principal samurai, prancing horses, lacquered litters, norimonos, bearing the wives and concubines of the princely staff, banners and streamers and glittering breastplates, all these filed slowly by and dazzled the eyes of the little rustic Ohano.

Then suddenly she felt her knees become weak, hands trembled, while a great flame rushed to her giddy little head. She became conscious of the fact that the train had suddenly halted, and that the bamboo hangings of a gilded norimon had parted. As the curtains of the norimon were slowly lifted, the six stout-legged retainers carrying the vehicle came to a standstill, while one of them, apparently receiving an order, deftly drew the hangings from side to side, revealing the personage within. The norimon’s occupant had raised himself lazily on his elbow and turned about sidewise in his carriage. His eyes were languorous and sleepy, slow and sensuous in their glance. They looked out now over the heads of the retainers, upward toward the small bluff upon which stood Ohano.

For some reason, perhaps because she saw something warmer than menace in the eyes of this indolent individual, Ohano smiled half unconsciously. Her little white teeth gleamed between her rosy lips. She appeared very bewitching as she stood there in her flowered gown in the sunlight.

A moment later something extraordinary happened to Ohano. She knew that stout arms had seized her, that her eyes were suddenly bound with linen, and then that she was lifted from her feet. Her giddy senses reeled to a dizzy unconsciousness.

When next she opened her eyes, she found that all was darkness about her. Consciousness came to her very slowly. She knew from the swaying movement of what seemed the soft couch upon which she lay that she was being carried somewhere. Ohano put out a fearful little hand, and it touched—a face! At that she sat up crying out in fright. Then the person who lay beside her stretched out hands toward her, and she was suddenly drawn down into his arms. He whispered in her ear, and his voice was like that of one speaking to her in a dream.

“Fear nothing, little dove. You are safe with me in my norimon. But to see you was to desire you. Do not tremble so. You will appreciate the honor I have done you, when you realize it. You shall be the favorite concubine of the Prince of Nijo, and never a wish of your heart or eyes shall be denied by me.”

She could not stir, so close he held her.

“It is so dark,” she cried breathlessly, “and I am afraid. O-O-most h-h-honorable prince.”

“It is night, pretty dove; but if I part the curtains of my norimon, the august moon will lend us joyful light. Will you then cease to tremble and to fear me?”

She began to sob weakly, and through her childish brain just then filtered the vague thought of Kwacho. She was like one enmeshed in a dream nightmare. He who lay beside her laughed softly, and sought to wipe away her tears with his sensuous lips.

“Tears are for the sad and homely. Never for the Jewel of Nijo! Well, with his own august lips he wipes them away from the pretty dove’s face. So and so!”

Yamada Kwacho returned to Echizen one week later. As became a bridegroom, the young husband had gone first to his home, intending to report to his prince immediately afterward. He entered the little farm-house with a joyous step and an eager, expectant face. He left the house like one shot from a cannon, on a mad run for the city. His brain whirled. He could not see. He could not think. He had a dim memory of having rushed upon the foolish maid like one demented, of listening with gaping mouth to the tale she told; then of thrusting her from him with such force that she fell to the floor in a heap.

Forgetting the respect due his lordship, the young farmer burst into the Daimio of Echizen’s presence. He had none of the samurai calm, and his whole form fairly shook and swayed with the strength of his emotions.

The Lord of Echizen thrust forward a startled face.

“News from the shogunate, Yamada Kwacho?” he cried, fearing from the aspect of the youth that some treachery had been done his political party. In disjointed sentences, words coming through his teeth with effort because of his heavy breathing, the young farmer told his lord of the kidnapping of his bride, and recalled to him that promise of aid when necessity should demand it.

The young husband pleaded not in vain. Grieved, insulted, and incensed, the Daimio of Echizen journeyed in person to the Mikado’s city of Kyoto, and straight to his August Majesty himself went the story of the farmer of Echizen. After this there was a great search made through the palaces and harems of the Prince of Nijo. Five months later Ohano was found and returned to her husband, Yamada Kwacho.

Three months had scarcely passed before the bells of the Imperial City rang out a joyous chime. The consort of the Prince of Nijo had given birth to a royal princess. On that same day, in the little farm-house of Yamada Kwacho, one more female citizen was added to the Province of Echizen, and Ohano became a mother.

CHAPTER I

THE CHILD OF THE SUN

CHAPTER I
THE CHILD OF THE SUN

ON the shore of Hayama, in a little village two hours’ ride by train from Tokyo, there stood a sumptuous villa, the summer residence of the Prince of Nijo, though Nijo himself was seldom seen there. Dissolute and dissipated by nature and cultivation, he preferred the gayeties and excitements of the Imperial Court. Here, however, had resided ever since the year of the Restoration his mother, the Empress Dowager, a noble and high-souled woman, who preferred the old-fashioned conservatism and beauty of her country palace to the modern and garish court.

The decorations of her palace, the style of her robes, and those of her attendants, were entirely of the old time. This was in pleasing contrast to the customs of the new Empress, who had adopted the foreign style. In the Imperial Court in its new Tokyo home, there was the heavy perfume of the choicest roses and violets, but in the palace of the old Empress Dowager there was the subtle, faint aroma of sweet umegaku and tambo.

Fuji, the queenly mountain, wrapped about in its glorious garment of snow, mellowed by the touch of the sun, could be seen from her seat. On all sides of the palace grounds there were valleys and sloping hills. Within the stone walls which encircled the palace like a fortress there were gardens of wondrous beauty.

The palace itself was of simple and old-fashioned architecture. It faced to the east, and its towers and turrets were of gold. Its shojis were large and so clear that the sunlight pierced through them, flooding the interior. The floors were covered with soft sweet tatamis—rush mats; the decorations on the screens and panels of the sliding doors were subdued and refined though works of art.

It was in this palace that the daughter of the Prince of Nijo spent her childhood. She was called Sado-ko, after her mother, who had died in giving her birth. Her father after his presence at a perfunctory feast given in honor of the birth of the princess had returned immediately to his pleasures in the capital, and Sado-ko was left in the charge of her grandmother, the Dowager Empress.

Great was the love existing between these two. All that was noblest in the character and nature of the young princess was fostered by the old Empress. The qualities for which she became noted in after years were the chilling work of those who, after the death of her grandmother, were given charge of Sado-ko.

In early childhood Sado-ko was wont to run with fleet feet about the castle gardens, chasing the gloriously hued butterflies. They flew about her in great numbers, for they were importations to the palace as tame as home birds. They knew the little princess would do them no harm, and so they fluttered lightly to her finger, her head, her shoulder, even to her red lips. Sado-ko loved them dearly, just as she adored the gardens and the goddess-like Fuji,—her first sight upon arising in the morning. She loved, too, the quiet, retired beauty of her life, with its freedom inside the dark stone walls. But more than these things she loved the Empress Dowager.

Until she was twelve years of age, she knew no other life than that encompassed by the walls of the palace grounds. Beyond them she had been told there was another life, turbulent, restless, troublous. The walls looked forbidding. How much worse must be the world outside them, and beyond the wide stretch of land and water that faded into misty outline!

Within were sunshine, birds, flowers, gentle words, and soft caressing smiles. Without, a cruel, cold world waiting to snuff out the warmth and sunshine of her nature. All this was taught to Sado-ko by the old Empress Dowager, who in her old age had become selfish. This was the way in which she sought to keep with her the heart and soul of the companion of her old age,—the child she loved. Even after she had passed away, she knew that the thoughts of the princess would remain with her though her soul should have flown. Thus she paved the way for a companionship in death as in life, as was the custom with her ancient ancestors.

The children of the Empress Dowager had disappointed her. The Emperor was occupied with the cares of the nation and the strenuous conditions of the times, Nijo was almost imbecile from dissipation, her only daughter had been married into the Tokugawa family, and was practically separated from her own kin. There was none left to share companionship with the old Empress, until the little Sado-ko had come. She was the sole princess of the Nijo family recognized by the Empress, for Western morality having sifted its way into the Japanese court, the children of Nijo by his concubines were regarded as illegitimate by the heads of the royal family, although they were treated with the honor due their blood and rank. Sado-ko was motherless. The Empress Dowager was her natural and legal guardian, and to her grandmother she was given.

For ten years, then, these two—the very old Empress and the very young princess—lived together. Because she was not at all of an inquisitive mind, and believed implicitly all that her grandmother told her, the child was perfectly contented with the simple companionship of the Empress, her butterflies, flowers, and birds. But her grandmother was too old to run with her about the gardens, and ofttimes the birds, and the butterflies too, flew over the stone wall and disappeared, to the tearful anxiety of the little princess, who was sure they would meet great harm.

As the children of the retainers of the Empress Dowager were not permitted to visit the private gardens of the palace, Sado-ko had grown up without playmates of her own age. She was being reared in that seclusion befitting a descendant of the sun-goddess, and in quite the ancient style to which her grandmother still clung. So it was only those attendants who waited upon the person of the Dowager Empress who saw the little princess herself. She could have counted upon her ten pink fingers the number of personages with whom she was acquainted. There were the four grim samurai guards of the palace gates, the three elderly maids of honor to the Empress, and her own personal maid and nurse Onatsu-no, in addition to the palace servants and the gardener.

But one eventful day in the month of June, a new personage suddenly introduced himself to Sado-ko. She had been listening drowsily for a long time on the wide balcony of the palace to her grandmother’s reading aloud of ancient Chinese poems, when suddenly a swarm of her own butterflies flew by, all seemingly following the lead of a purple-hued stranger. Instantly Sado-ko left her guardian’s side in pursuit, her net swinging in her hand. She had seldom experienced any trouble in catching her own butterflies, but the stranger flew in an entirely new direction. Through a field of iris and across an orchard Sado-ko followed the flight of the butterflies, until she came to a wall, over which the purple visitor flew.

“A score of ripe cherries descended upon her head.”

Flushed and disappointed the princess sat down breathlessly on the grass beneath a cherry tree. She had been seated but a moment, when the tree above her began to shake and a score of ripe cherries descended upon her head. She sprang to her feet, and looking upward saw a roguish face peering down at her from the cherry tree. The face belonged to a boy of possibly fourteen years. He was laughing with delight at the amazed and frightened face of the little princess, and he kept pelting her with cherries, some of which actually broke on her small Imperial person. As, however, Sado-ko continued to gaze up at him in that frightened manner, he sprang to the ground, rolled himself about on the grass for a spell, and then turned several somersaults so grotesque that Sado-ko forgot her fear and burst into childish laughter, clapping her hands delightedly as he came to his feet before her. They were both laughing heartily now, as they surveyed each other. The boy’s sleeves and the front of his obi were filled with cherries, so that his figure was a succession of grotesque bunches. There were cherry stains, too, on his face, particularly in the region of his laughing mouth, through which Sado-ko saw the whitest of teeth gleaming. He had brown eyes, and soft silky hair, unshaven in the centre of his head, as was the case with the palace attendants. Gradually as the princess surveyed him she became grave.

“Who are you?” she said at last. “What is your honorable name, and where do you live?”

“I am Kamura Junzo,” said the boy, “and I live over yonder.” He waved his hand toward the wall.

“On the other side?” inquired Sado-ko in an awed voice. He nodded.

“I know who you are,” he continued.

“I am the Princess Sado-ko,” said the child, gravely.

“Yes,” said the boy, “and the august Sun was your ancestor. You live shut up in this place all alone, and no one plays with you.”

“I have my honorable dear birds and butterflies,” she said.

He looked at her curiously.

“Yes, I have heard you singing to them.”

“And you wished also to see me?” she questioned.

“Yes.” He flushed boyishly, and then added with Spartan honesty, “Also I wanted some of your cherries.”

“They are very good,” said the princess.

“Oh, yes, there are none so good without.”

“Did the guards deign to let you pass through the gates?”

“No.” A pause, then: “I deigned to climb over the wall.”

“Some day,” said Sado-ko, wistfully, “her Majesty says a prince will fly over the walls and carry me away. Perhaps you are that prince.”

“Oh, no; I am not a prince, but if you wish, I will play that I am one.”

“How is that?” she asked, bewildered.

“This cherry tree will be your august castle. I will come over the wall, and you must run around the castle to escape me. I will pursue you, and then I will carry you off from this dark and lonesome prison over the walls to the beautiful world outside.”

“But it is not a lonesome prison here,” said the princess, “and outside it is very cold and miserable, for her Majesty has told me so.”

“Oh, well, let us play it is so.”

And so they played together until past noon, when the maid and gardener were both sent to seek the Princess Sado-ko, who was chasing butterflies. They rescued her just as the “prince” was about to carry her over the walls, upon the top of which he had placed her, by climbing up in the cherry tree and across a bough which sloped to the wall.

The rescued princess stamped her foot angrily at the gardener when he threatened the boy, who laughed jeeringly from the top of the wall; and she scolded the maid when that menial drew her by the hand from the scene. She would not leave the vicinity of the wall until the boy had disappeared completely, which he did by jumping off to the other side. Then she burst into tears for fear he had come to harm in the wicked world without.

Thereafter a close watch was kept upon her movements, and she was not permitted to go near that portion of the walls where stood the cherry-tree castle. Often she heard the boy whistling from that direction, and once she awoke in the night, because she had dreamed that he was calling her name, “Sado-ko! Sado-ko!” After that life was a little more lonesome for the Child of the Sun.

CHAPTER II

AN EMPEROR’S PROMISE

CHAPTER II
AN EMPEROR’S PROMISE

ON a cold morning in the month of January the Empress Dowager died. She had returned from a ceremony of the thirtieth anniversary of the death of her late consort. Exhausted, broken, and ill, she had come back to her country-seat, her visit to Kyoto having been too much for her strength.

That night messengers went in haste to the capital, and the following morning brought to the bedside of the dying Empress her son, the Emperor, and his consort.

All night long the little Princess Sado-ko crouched in the darkness of her room alone. Wide-eyed and tearless, she looked out from her shoji at the ghostly snow which shrouded her beloved trees and flowers in so cold and chilly a garment, eerily touched by the moon-rays. She heard, without heeding, the movement and stir within the palace; the muffled beat of a drum without quickly hushed. Early in the gray morning the royal visitors arrived. Sado-ko knew that some catastrophe was about to fall upon the palace and her beloved grandmother, and so she waited through the night for the end.

She did not know that below in the sick chamber the heartbroken Emperor knelt on his knees by the side of his mother and besought her, like any ordinary man, to speak but one word to him, to express but one wish ere she must leave him. The Dowager Empress opened her tired eyes, attempting to speak. She could only murmur in the faintest of voices, so that her son scarcely caught the words:—

“Sado-ko—Pray thee to care for—Sado-ko!”

Then her eyes closed as though the effort at speech had been too much for her, but the Emperor knew that she heard the words he spoke into her ears.

“Divine mother, the Princess Sado-ko shall have my personal care. She shall be nurtured and cared for as the highest princess in Japan, and when she has attained to a fitting age the greatest honor in my power shall be given to her.”

There was no further sign from the Dowager Empress.

“Princess!” called a voice penetrating the darkened room, by the shoji of which the child crouched dully. “Noble princess!”

Sado-ko did not stir, though she looked with wide eyes toward the sliding door through which came her maiden Natsu, holding carefully above her head a lighted andon. She had not seen the little figure by the shoji, and she shuffled toward the couch. A startled exclamation escaped her when she discovered that the couch was empty. At that the princess called to her in a strange voice, which seemed somehow unlike her own.

“I am here, honorable maid.”

The woman hastened forward, the light still swinging over her head. She stopped aghast before the still little figure of the princess, who was, she could see, fully dressed. It was plain that the child had robed herself with her own hands, after she had left her for the night.

The maid set the andon down, then touched the floor with her head. After her obeisance she went nearer to Sado-ko, and spoke with the familiarity which years in the child’s service had allowed her.

“Thou art not unrobed, noble princess!”

“I have not slept,” said the child, quietly.

The maid seized her hands with an exclamation of pity.

“The hands are like ice!” she exclaimed immediately. “Exalted princess, you are ill!”

“No,” said Sado-ko, shaking her head, “I am not ill, Natsu-no. But tell me your mission. Why do you come so early to my chamber?”

There was nothing childlike now in the grave glance of Sado-ko’s eyes. She seemed to have aged over night. At her words the maid burst into tears, beat her hands against her breast, and finally bent her head to the floor. The princess waited in silence until the maid had regained somewhat of her composure. Then she said severely, quite in the manner of her august grandparent:—

“Maiden, such emotion is unseemly. Speak your mission, if you please.”

“Oh, august princess, her Imperial Majesty—” She fell to weeping again.

Sado-ko leaned forward, and placing her hand on the maid’s shoulder, peered into her face.

“—is dead?” she said in a whisper.

The maid’s head bowed forward mutely. After that there was a long silence. Then Sado-ko arose to her feet, her hands pressed to her face on either side. Her eyes, between her little parted fingers, were staring out in shocked horror. Her strange silence stilled the sobbing maid, who tremulously arose.

“And if it please thee, noble princess,” she said, “his August Majesty is below and commands thy immediate presence.”

Sado-ko did not speak or move. The maid falteringly touched one of the drooping sleeves.

“Nay, do not look so, sweet mistress,” she implored; “the gods will not desert you. His Majesty himself has deigned to adopt thee, and to-morrow thou wilt go to the great capital as his ward.”

Sado-ko’s hands fell from her face. Her voice was not childlike, and quite hoarse.

“Pray thee, lead me below, honorable maid.”

It was lighter now in the palace, for a wan sun was creeping upward in the pale heavens. There were signs of a dreary day about to dawn. Through the winding corridors of the palace the princess and the maid moved toward the august chamber of death. At its door they paused and the princess’s hand dropped from that of the maid. Having permitted her attendant to push the sliding doors apart, she entered the chamber alone. Without, the maid bent her face to the mats, stifling her sobs in her sleeves. Within, the little princess hesitated a moment in doubt, then rushed to the death couch, threw herself down by the still form there, and unmindful of those within, encircled it with her arms. But no cry escaped her lips, for well had she been bred as a Daughter of the Sun-god by the old Empress Dowager.

The days that followed were hazy and unreal to Sado-ko. Strange women and men, with cold impassive faces, were about her at all times. She could scarcely tell one from the other, and it wearied her to be forced to listen to their words of caution and counsel. Then she made a journey. Strangely enough, when she was lifted into the covered palanquin and the curtains drawn about her, she knew that now she was to be carried beyond the gray palace walls. The journey was made at night, and the tired little princess slept throughout it, so that she was spared the tediousness of time.

In the morning her eyes opened upon a new world. As the day streamed through the bamboo curtains of her norimon, she pushed them aside, to see that they were passing along what seemed to be a stone road, upon either side of which were endless buildings unlike anything she had ever seen before. Although there were throngs of people everywhere, a strange and solemn silence prevailed, as the norimon and parade of the princess passed along, and the people bent their heads to the earth. Sado-ko could see that many of the women and some of the men wept. She did not know that the whole nation had gone into mourning for the one she had loved so well.

Sado-ko, passive and unquestioning, saw the great funeral of the Empress Dowager; a dumb little shadow, she lingered with other relatives in the hall for the mourners, and still, with little understanding, she was carried in her norimon under the escort given only to a royal princess, through a bamboo grove and over the Yumento Ukibashi—“The Bridge of Dreams.” The mortuary hall was reached. The Empress Dowager, whose dearest wish had been to be buried close to her summer palace, where she had spent her declining years, was interred far away from it among the tombs of her thousand ancestors.

CHAPTER III

MASAGO

CHAPTER III
MASAGO

FROM a poor but honored farmer of Echizen, Yamada Kwacho had grown to be a rich and prominent merchant of Tokyo. At the advice of the Lord of Echizen, Kwacho had gone to Tokyo soon after the Restoration, where, taking advantage of the modern craze for Western things then raging in the capital, he had invested the price of his little farm in one of the first “European” stores in Tokyo. His business had prospered and grown rapidly to huge dimensions. Now, while Kwacho was still in the prime of life, he found himself richer in worldly wealth than his former master the Lord of Echizen even in his best days.

The young farmer of Echizen had been content to remain in his humble class, though honors were offered him by his lord. The rich and prominent merchant of Tokyo was still at heart the conservative and independent young farmer of Echizen. Despite the fact that his great wealth would have purchased for him an entrée to a high society, Kwacho made no effort to emerge from his life of quiet and obscure ease. Possibly, too, an experience of his early married life caused him to look askance and with disfavor upon the lives of the society people. At all events a pretty home in a suburb of Tokyo, and the society of a few simple neighbors, quite contented him.

Whether the ambitions of Ohano kept the level of those of her husband, was not a matter of any determination. The mistress of a comfortable home, the comely wife of a respected citizen, and the mother of five sons and one daughter, she appeared contented with her lot.

There had always been a weak and soft element in the character of Ohano, however. In youth it had come near to being the cause of her complete ruin. But for the sturdy nature of her husband, Ohano might never have recovered morally. In latter years this weakness of disposition took the form of an almost childish delight in dwelling secretly in her own mind upon experiences in her life which she would not have breathed aloud even to her favorite god, much less to her sombre husband. Strangely enough, too, Ohano had far more affection for her daughter than for her sons,—a most uncommon thing in a Japanese woman.

As a little girl, Masago had been remarkable chiefly for her docile and quiet ways. This apathy of nature, peculiar in a child of her class, had been variously regarded by the teachers in the public school she had attended. Some had pronounced her dull and even sullen, while others insisted that her impassiveness showed an innate refinement and delicacy of birth and caste. Masago was very pretty after a delicate Yamato fashion. Unlike her sturdy young brothers, round-faced, rugged, and brimming over with health and spirits, Masago was oval-faced, her eyes were long and dreamy, her mouth small, the lips thin and prettily curved. Her skin was of a fine texture, and her little hands were quite as beautiful as those of the princesses who attended the Peeresses’ school.

Masago’s schoolmates thought her quiet disposition indicative of secretiveness and even slyness. She had never been known to express herself on any question, though no one gave closer attention to any matter under controversy than she. The consequence was that as she grew older her girl friends, at first sceptical and dubious of her quiet, unexpressive face, finally ended in confiding to her their various secrets; for well they knew that while they might expect no exchange of confidences, their secrets were well guarded within Masago’s silent little head and as safe as if unspoken.

Ohano, too, was quick to take advantage of the child’s listening talent and receptive mind. In spite of the fact that Masago was coming to an age when all such confidences should have been strictly kept from her, Ohano found herself gradually pouring out to her daughter those fascinating and forbidden secrets which still remained in her mind. She would sit opposite her daughter for hours at a time and describe graphically the palaces of Kyoto. It would have occurred to one older than Masago that, for one in her caste, Ohano’s knowledge of these places was unusual. But the child asked few questions and appeared to be absorbed in her mother’s glowing narrative. Only once she said, lifting her strange long eyes to her mother’s face:—

“It is in the palace I belong, mother, is it not?” And before Ohano was conscious of her words she had replied:—

“There, indeed, you belong of right, Masago.”

When Masago had reached her seventeenth year, she expressed her first independent wish to her family. It was that she be sent to a finishing school in Kyoto.

At her suggestion, made directly to him, Kwacho was disgruntled. She had had sufficient education for a maiden of her class, he insisted. What was more, he desired her to make an early marriage and had already begun negotiations for her betrothal.

Masago listened to her father’s words without replying, beyond a wordless bow of submission to his will. She did not argue the matter with him, since she knew that Ohano, without diplomacy and craft, had yet great influence with Kwacho. So the young girl went quietly to her mother, whom she found happily employed in washing a small barking chin on the rear veranda of the house. She looked back smilingly at her daughter over her shoulder as she rubbed the dog’s twitching little body.

“He is white enough,” said Masago, quietly, indicating the chin with a slight movement of her head. At this verdict Ohano released the dog. He darted about the veranda for a moment, shaking his still wet little body, then rushed through the shoji indoors, disappearing under a mat over a warm hibachi, where he shivered in comfort.

Ohano emptied out the water across a flower bed, and unrolled her sleeves. She was flushed with her exercise, and the water had splashed her gown. Her hair, too, was dishevelled, but she was the picture of the healthy housewife, as she turned to her daughter.

The latter, in her perfect neatness, made a contrast to the mother, who surveyed her with fond approval.

“Well, Masago, have you finished your embroidery?” she asked pleasantly.

The girl shook her head silently.

“Go, then; get your frame now,” said Ohano, “and we will work together.”

“No,” said Masago, seating herself on a veranda mat, and leaning back against the railing, “I don’t want to work. I want to talk to you.”

Ohano’s plump body quickly seated itself opposite Masago. The opportunity for a morning gossip with Masago was something she never denied herself.

She had just opened her mouth to begin, When Masago quietly put her hand over the red orifice.

“No; do not speak for a moment, mother, but listen to me.”

Masago smiled faintly at the expression in her mother’s eyes and continued rapidly:—

“Listen. I am seventeen years now,—old enough, almost, my father says, to be married. But I do not wish to marry.”

“But—” began Ohano.

“No; do not interrupt me. I want to go away to school,—a private school in Kyoto, where other rich men send their daughters, and where I, too, can sometimes see those palaces and maybe the noble ladies and gentlemen you have told me so much about.”

“But, Masago, every maiden of your age wishes to marry; and your father has chosen—”

“Let me finish, if you please, or I will not talk to you at all. I do not know why it is, but I have no desire to marry; and sometimes I feel like one who is stifling in this miserable little town. Why should we, who have more wealth than many of those in Tokyo who live in palaces, be caged up here, like birds with clipped wings? What is the use of having that wealth if we may not use it? Oh, there are so many joyful happenings in the capital every day and every night. I read about it in those papers which father brings home sometimes from Tokyo. The city is so gay and brilliant, mother, and there are so many peculiar foreigners to see. I was made for such a place—not for this dull, quiet town. Why, I would even be content to see all this as an outsider, but to have to remain here when—Oh!”

She struck her hands together with an eloquent motion. Ohano stared at her aghast, regarding her flushing face and snapping eyes.

“Oh, mother,” she continued, “many people say I do not belong here. They recognize my difference from themselves,—everybody here. You know it is so. Ever since I was a little girl when you would tell me the fairy tales of those palaces in Kyoto—”

“They were not fairy tales,” said Ohano, gently.

“No, but I thought them so—then. And I imagined that some day the gods would befriend me, and that I would belong to that joyful world of which you spoke. And now to come to seventeen years and to be given right away in marriage to some foolish youth before I have had any chance to see—”

Her voice broke, and her emotion was so unusual a thing that Ohano could not bear to see it. Both her heart and tongue were stirred.

“You have a right to see it,” she said. “You belong to it—are a part of it, Masago. Your own father is—”

She clapped her hands over her mouth in consternation and sudden fright at what she was about to divulge.

Masago became very white, her eyes dilated, her thin nostrils quivered. She fixed her strange, long eyes full on those of her mother. Then she seized her by the shoulders. She spoke in a whisper:—

“You have something to tell me. Now—speak at once.”

Half an hour later Masago was alone on the veranda of her home. She sat in an attitude of intense absorption. Her downcast eyes were looking at the slender fingers of her hands, spread out in her lap. They were thin, shapely little fingers, the nails rosy and perfect in shape. Masago had been studying them absently for some time. Suddenly she held up one little hand, then slowly brought it to her face.

“That was the reason they were so beautiful—my hands!” she said softly.

That night Ohano would not let her husband sleep until he had made her a promise. They lay on their respective mattresses under the same mosquito netting. It was quite in vain for Kwacho to sleep while the voice of Ohano droned on. After listening for fully two hours to a steady stream of childish eloquence and reproach, and answering only in gruff monosyllables, he sprang up in bed and demanded of his better half whether she intended to remain awake all night. Whereat that small but stubborn individual raised herself also, and, propping her elbows on her knees, informed the irate Kwacho that such was her intention, and that, in fact, she did not expect to sleep any night again until he had made some concession to the ambition of their only daughter, which, after all, was a most praiseworthy one,—a desire for more learning.

Kwacho’s answer was not the result of a sudden appreciation of Masago’s virtues, but he was sleepy and tired, too. There was much to be done at the store on the morrow, and Ohano’s suggestion that she intended to keep awake for other nights was not a relishing prospect.

“She shall go on one condition,” he said.

“Yes?” eagerly inquired his wife.

“That she is first betrothed to Kamura Junzo.”

“There will be no trouble as to that,” said Ohano, with conviction, and lying down drew the quilt over her. A few minutes later the twain were at rest.

CHAPTER IV

A BETROTHAL

CHAPTER IV
A BETROTHAL

THE following morning an early messenger brought a letter to the Kamura residence. The family were at breakfast, but as the messenger came from the elder Kamura’s old Echizen friend, Yamada Kwacho, it was opened and read at once. Its contents, while surprising, were most pleasing to the family. Kwacho made an overture to contract a betrothal between their eldest son, Junzo, and his only daughter, Masago.

Junzo at this time was in Tokyo, where he had been living ever since he had returned from abroad. He was winning fame for himself as a sculptor,—an art quite new to Japan in its Western form,—and the family were proud of his achievements. This new mark of compliment from their esteemed friend, the wealthy Mr. Yamada, naturally flattered the Kamura family immensely. The messenger was sent back to the Yamada house with as gracious letter as the one received, and gifts of flowers and tea. The invitation of Mr. Yamada for a conference at his house the day following, in which the young couple might also have an opportunity of seeing each other and becoming acquainted, was accepted. Another messenger was despatched at once to Junzo in Tokyo, and the family congratulated themselves upon what they considered their good fortune.

Junzo read his father’s letter with a degree of irritation altogether out of keeping with the pride in the proposal manifested by the rest of his family. An extraordinary piece of fortune had recently come to Junzo, and the subject of his marriage seemed a matter of trivial importance beside it. He had, in fact, been commissioned to make a statue of the Prince Komatzu, the war hero of the time, who had distinguished himself by his brave conduct in the Formosa affair. Junzo knew that upon this work his future career would depend, and that should he please his illustrious patron he would doubtless have an opportunity of doing more work for the court; for at this time the nobility of Japan emulated everything modern and Western, and it had become the fashion for the gentlemen of the court to sit for their portraits in oil, though as yet none of the ladies had gone quite so far.

Junzo’s impatience, therefore, at his father’s summons to return home for the consummation of his betrothal to a young lady whom he had never seen, may be surmised. Being a well-bred and obedient son, however, he departed at once for his home, breaking a number of engagements in so doing.

As the train from Tokyo carried Junzo to Kamakura, the young man, while watching the flying landscape from his window, thought with some natural curiosity of his bride to be. Her father and mother he had met. Upon two or three occasions he had seen her little brothers playing in the fields. His active imagination soon pictured Masago. She would, of course, be plump and rosy-cheeked like her mother, pretty perhaps, thought Junzo, but lacking in that grace and spirituality that to him was the ideal of true beauty.

When his own grandsires had been samurai in the service of the Lords of Echizen, this girl’s ancestors had tilled the soil. Still, times were changed. The samurai had fallen, and the tradesman and farmer had risen. Now the descendants of the samurai drew the jinrikisha containing the fat merchant, or policed the streets of big cities for the glory of still wearing a sword. Moreover, the elder Kamura was in sympathy with the modern spirit of the times, and had accepted favors from the hand of Yamada Kwacho. Besides, the latter had not been without honor in Echizen; and, after all, his own family—the once proud samurai family of Kamura—were now but simple citizens, nothing more.

“The Restoration was right and just,” said Junzo, and smoothed out the frown from his patrician face. “And after all,” he added to his thought, “this girl of the people will be a more fitting wife than a woman of modern fancies, such as have become the ladies of caste.”

Masago’s aspect pleased, surprised—nay, quite bewildered Junzo. When at the look-at meeting she had raised her head finally from its low obeisance, Junzo had been startled at its delicate beauty. It shocked him to see a flower so exquisitely lovely and delicate surrounded by relatives so completely plebeian.

During the entire visit Junzo found his eyes constantly straying toward his betrothed. When she moved about the room, and with her own hands served him tea, he noted with delight her grace of movement, and the symmetry of her figure.

When tea had been served and drunk, he found her close beside him. She had moved dutifully there at a signal from her father; and now, as his betrothed, she quietly filled the long-stemmed pipe for him, and lighted it at the hibachi. As he took it from her hands, their eyes met for the first time. Junzo, though thrilled by the glance of her eyes, felt curiously enough repulsed. There was something forbidding, almost menacing, in their glance. A moment later the long lashes were shielding them. Then the young man noted that she had not as much as changed color, but still was calmly white and unmoved. A feeling of uneasiness possessed him. His delight in her beauty was chilled.

Once only throughout the afternoon did she show interest in the conversation. This was when Junzo had told his father-in-law to be, of a prospective visit to court to make a statue of a national hero. Then she had raised her head suddenly, and Junzo had stumbled over his words in the glow of artistic appreciation he felt of the beautiful pink color flooding her face.

The elder Kamura thought his son’s modesty in not mentioning the fact of the commission he had already received unnecessary in a family soon to become his own; and so he said, as he tapped the ashes from his pipe on the hibachi:—

“My son has been commanded to make a statue of his Imperial Highness the Prince Komatzu.”

The little cup which Masago had lifted toward her lips fell suddenly from her hand, its contents spilling on the tray. She seemed scarcely conscious of its fall, as she turned an eager and flushed face toward Kamura. She spoke for the first time, repeating half mechanically his words:—

“The Prince Komatzu—”

“Yes,” said Kamura, affably, “a cousin of his Imperial Majesty,” and he bowed his head to the mats in old-fashioned deference to the name of the Mikado.

“Why,” spoke up the simple Ohano, her eyes wide and bright, “we have his august picture.”

Her husband looked at her in astonishment.

“You have a picture of his Highness?” he inquired incredulously. “How is that possible, Ohano?”

“Masago cut it from a Chinese magazine you brought home last month,” said the wife, “and it was such a beautiful picture she has put it away among her treasures, have you not, Masago?”

The girl’s eyes were downcast, and she did not raise them. She knew by the silence in the room that her answer was awaited by the company, but she could not move her lips to speak. Then she heard Junzo answering quietly for her:—

“He is certainly the most admirable hero we have, and one that it honors our nation to idolize.”

His words were rewarded by a glance from the eyes she raised in timid gratitude. It was but for a moment; then her head was bent again.

For a week Junzo saw his fiancée daily. At the end of that time he accompanied her with her family a portion of the way to Kyoto, whither she went to attend school for a year. Junzo then proceeded alone to Tokyo, and on his journey back his musings of his future bride were as vague and unsatisfactory as when he had come.

CHAPTER V

GOSSIP OF THE COURT

CHAPTER V
GOSSIP OF THE COURT

IT was early afternoon. The ladies in the Komatzu palace were taking their noon-day siesta, and idly discussing the work of the artist, Kamura Junzo. Since he had become a favorite among them, many of the ladies wished that he could be retained in the palace a little longer.

As they sipped their amber tea indolently in one of the chambers of the palace, they gossiped with the freedom common to the women of the West rather than the East.

“Now,” said the little Countess Matsuka, handing her cup to a page, “if we were only so fortunate as to have two Imperial heroes instead of one!”

A languorous beauty, swinging lazily in a Dutch hammock, raised herself upon an elbow.

“But the heroes nowadays are all heimins” (commoners), she said with soft scorn.

“Oh, Duchess Aoi,” laughed a pretty young woman, who, more industrious, was working at an embroidery frame, “how can you say so? There are no heimins to-day.”

“Oh, true,” responded the other, crossly, “there is no caste to-day. The heimin has become the politician.”

“Yes,” said the pretty one at the frame, “and the politician rules and owns Nippon.”

The Duchess Aoi sat up aggressively.

“You appear to have the confidence of the diplomats, O Lady Fuji-no,” said she.

Fuji tossed her head in malicious silence.

“Noble ladies!” came the warning voice of the elderly mentor-chaperon. “It is too warm to engage the august voice in argument. Let us have music.”

The Duchess Aoi shrugged her shapely shoulders.

“The court geishas are busy in the male quarters,” she said, “and the foreign band has broken our ear-drums.”

One of the ladies laughed.

“Besides,” she added to Aoi’s speech, “we don’t want the foreign music in our private halls. It is enough for state occasions.”

“I enjoy it augustly well,” said a stiff little lady sitting uncomfortably in her Paris gown on an English chair, who bore the euphonious name of Yu-giri (Evening Mist). She was the only one of the company who wore European costume. The others were glad enough to revel in the comfortable enjoyment of the kimono.

“If her Royal Highness were not so augustly eccentric, she might set the example,” said the Countess Matsuka, thoughtfully.

“Which Highness, countess?”

“There is only one Royal Highness in the palace now,” said Lady Fuji, smiling up from her frame,—“the Princess Sado-ko.”

Aoi tossed her head angrily. Her mother had been a concubine of one of the Imperial princes, and she was of the blood. Yet she was maid of honor to the Princess Sado-ko, for whom she had no love.

“And what example might she set?” Aoi inquired with evident disdain.

“That of sitting for her portrait to be painted,” explained the Countess Matsuka.

All of the ladies now showed extreme interest in the subject, and several began to speak at once.

“Oh, but she would never countenance it!”

“She fairly despises the ways of us moderns.”

“Just to think, it is in her power to keep our charming artist at court indefinitely.”

“But how lovely to have all our pictures painted. We, of course, would all follow suit.”

“—if she would only set the fashion.”

“Well, ladies,” said the Lady Fuji, “the princess is not our fashion-plate, surely. We do not follow her, it would seem. If we did—”

“We should live like cloistered priestesses,” said the one in the hammock.

“Yes, seclude ourselves from the sight of the whole court,” said she of the Paris gown.

“Then why need we await her august example?” asked the Lady Fuji.

“Because we are cowards—all,” said the Countess Matsuka. “To sit for our pictures just like any of the barbarians is too much of an innovation for any of the humble ones to start at court.”

“Well, then,” said Fuji, “who is brave enough to suggest it to the princess? She is both conservative and unconventional, and who knows she might take a fancy to the idea and consent?”

“Well, suppose you suggest it to her.”

“I? Oh, indeed, I am too honorably insignificant.”

“Then you, countess.”

“Oh no, indeed; I am still smarting under the sting of her little royal tongue.”

“Ah, you are too fulsome in your flattery to her, countess,” said Lady Fuji-no. “Diplomacy and tact with her Highness should take the form of frankness, even brusqueness.”

“Yes,” said the one in the hammock, sarcastically, “I noted the effect of your diplomacy the other morning.”

Lady Fuji-no colored, and bent her head above her work.

“Oh, these days, these days!” groaned the elderly lady, who was both chaperon and mentor to the others. “Now, in my insignificant youth it would have been a crime of treason to speak with disrespect of a royal princess.”

“But you see,” was the quick retort, “what happened to your august days, Madame Bara. They are quite, quite snuffed out. To-day is—to-day! We are modern—Western—if it please you!”

“Yes,” assented the Paris gown, “that is it exactly.”

“While the Princess Sado-ko remains—Eastern.”

Lady Fuji, at the frame, had found her voice again. The Duchess Aoi in the hammock closed her eyes contemptuously.

“The day is long,” she said, “and our conversation most dull.”

“Well, we have not solved the question yet,” said the anxious little Countess Matsuka.

“Oh, let the artist go,” yawned one of the company, who had not yet spoken.

There was a hubbub of dissent to this.

“And leave us to the mercies of Komatzu’s dandies?”

“The artist fellow is entertaining. He is preferable to a geisha.”

“Oh, what a comparison!”

“Well, ladies,” said Madame Bara, soothingly, “you will soon be back in Tokyo.”

“Yes, thank Shaka!”

“Summer creeps.”

“The Prince Komatzu would not be flattered, ladies, at your boredom in his summer home,” said Madame Bara.