Daughters of Nijo: A Romance of Japan
of Natsu-no. The maid stared at it in some bewilderment, then held it
further in the light.
“Tell me, maiden, who is this?”
Still the maid held it in the light. Her eyes widened, then suddenly she
bent her head before the pictured face, next to the floor.
“Who is this?” repeated Sado-ko.
“You, sweet mistress,” said the maid,—“a most bewitching honorable
likeness of your Highness.”
“You are sure?” asked Sado-ko, smiling strangely.
“As sure as that the night is night,” declared the maid, again regarding
the picture.
“Maiden, does a princess wear flowers in her hair? See, there is the
bara (rose) to either side on this girl’s head.”
Natsu-no started.
“No, no, exalted one.”
“Did ever princess wear such a gown as this, my maiden?”
“Oh, princess!” The woman appeared shaken with a sudden terror.
“Do not drop the picture, if you please,” said Sado-ko, “but look at it
again. Observe the knotted fashion of the obi, Natsu-no. Quite in the
style of a geisha, is it not?—or rather the poor imitation of some
simple maid who would copy the style from the pleasure women.”
The maid dropped the picture as though a thing unclean. At that motion
the princess still smiled, but more inscrutably.
“Oh, noble princess, what evil one did dare to put your Highness’s face
upon such a picture? It is a national disgrace.”
Reflectively Sado-ko looked at the picture.
“Perhaps it was the gods, O Natsu-no,” she said, as silently she put the
picture in her sleeve.
She arose, regarding her maid’s emotion.
“Come,” she ordered, “undress me for the night, good maiden, for I am
very tired, and to-morrow—to-morrow we must go upon a journey.”
“To Tokyo,” said Natsu, “with the noble Prince Komatzu’s suite, and oh,
sweet mistress, life will have a happier aspect when we leave this
melancholy place.”
Lifting her hands to her head, Sado-ko withdrew the long jewelled pins.
Her hair fell in midnight glory to her knees.
Kneeling by her, the maid tied her hair back, a very old-fashioned mode
which the ladies in her grandmother’s youth were fond of following when
retiring, and to which the Princess Sado-ko had faithfully adhered.
“Does the honorable cortège leave before noon?” asked the maid.
“Yes.”
“And all the kuge (court nobles) and the ladies, also, go?”
“Yes.”
“Then I must haste. The sky already lightens. The night is past. When
will my mistress sleep?”
“There is much time for us to sleep to-morrow. We do not accompany
Prince Komatzu’s train,” said Sado-ko in a low voice, as though she
spoke half to herself.
The maid paused in her arrangement of her mistress’s couch, and,
kneeling, stared at her.
“Noble princess, did you not just now speak of a journey?” she asked,
with evident agitation.
“Yes,” said the princess, wearily; “to-morrow we also will make a
journey, but—we go alone! Pray you, hurry with my bed, Natsu-no.”
Without speaking the maid drew the robe about the princess, now upon the
couch. Then she spread her own quilt-mattress at the feet of her
mistress.
“Good night, kind maid,” said Sado-ko, and closed her eyes.
“Princess!” cried the maid, in a choked voice, “forgive the
insignificant one, but whither do we journey to-morrow?”
“To Kamakura,” said the princess, in a dragging voice; she was tired
now. “We will go for a little while—just a little while, Natsu-no, to
the castle Aoyama.”
The maid was speechless. When she found her tongue, its faltering
sentences betrayed her agitation.
“Princess—the artist-man—”
“Has gone to-night. Take peace, restless maid. Good night.”
“But whither, Lady Princess, whither went the artist-man?”
“I bid you speak no more. Good night.”
* * * * *
The house party of the Prince Komatzu ended the following day. A special
train carried the exalted ones back to Tokyo, whither they went at once
to the palace Nijo, for there Komatzu always made his home in Tokyo,
with his cousin, the Prince of Nijo.
There was much gossip and idle conjecture in the party as to the caprice
of the Princess Sado-ko. At the last moment she had despatched word to
Komatzu, saying that she would not travel in the unholy barbarian train,
but preferred to proceed leisurely to Tokyo in the old-fashioned but
honorable mode of travel,—by kago or norimono. Should the journey prove
too tiresome for her strength, she would stop a little while in
Kamakura, at the castle Aoyama, and there it was possible she might
spend a day or two in maidenly retirement. She desired, however, that
her suite should not await her, but proceed with the train to Tokyo. She
did not wish to deprive them of the enjoyment (to them) of the peculiar
foreign method of travel, and would need only her personal
attendants,—eight men retainers, whom she still termed “samurai,” the
chaperon, old Madame Bara, and her waiting-woman, Natsu-no.
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CHAPTER XII
MISTS OF KAMAKURA
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CHAPTER XII
MISTS OF KAMAKURA
THERE were marsh lands and boggy rice-fields in the valley country along
the Hayama, and during the season of White Dew (end of August) the river
was low and scarcely seemed to stir.
In the early morning a white mist arose from it, eerily enshrouding the
land like a veil of gauze, evaporating, and disappearing slowly.
Sometimes, too, at night heavy fogs rose up even to the hills and
obscured all sight of land. Oftentimes the traveller, even the native,
lost his way. Tales were told of the smiling, languorous river, whose
beauty, siren-like, lured her victims to destruction.
Even the villagers, whose homes nestled so cosily in the fragrant
valleys, did not venture out on foggy nights in the direction of the
river, unless attended by the Hayama guide, Oka, who boasted he could
find his way blind-folded among the familiar paths of Kamakura, even to
the very water’s edge.
Almost beyond sight of the village, above the heads of the sloping
hills, the lordly castle Aoyama looked over the mists of the valley at
Fuji in the sky distance.
It was five o’clock in the afternoon. A young girl sat by an open shoji,
motionless and silent, staring up at the ghost-like hills. The
descending mists told her that long before the darkness came all sight
of the spot upon which she gazed would be obliterated. She lingered on
in melancholy discontent, her chin upon her hand, her embroidery frame
idle at her side.
Beyond a few servants of the household no one was at home save Masago.
She knew that her thoughts and meditations would be free from
interruption, and so she gave herself up to them unreservedly, with
inward passion.
The Yamada house was situated on a rising eminence. From the maiden
Masago’s casement the golden peaks of the palace Aoyama were visible. It
was upon these points that the young girl fixed her eyes with a vague
expression of suffering, wistfulness, and yearning.
What were the thoughts of Masago, fresh from the training of a modern
and fashionable school in the old capital of Kyoto? The dreams that had
stirred the apathetic mind of Ohano’s daughter into vague discontent had
not been removed by the months of schooling, but were more definite, and
therefore more painful.
In Masago’s hands was the same picture of the martial prince-hero which
she had once cut from a Chinese magazine, and which since then she had
never ceased to adore. Always this shining prince was entangled in her
other dreams. Hands and eyes now both were fixed upon her heart’s
desire.
To her the stately palace Aoyama bespoke that other world, intoxicating,
ecstatic, desirable, upon the very edge of which she might not even
cling,—she who had been born to it. The innate craving of the Prince of
Nijo for the sensations of the upper world ate at the very heart of the
daughter of Ohano. To her, life in this world was the most desirable
thing on earth; it must satisfy every craving of the mind and heart, and
in it, Masago knew, belonged her hero-prince. She was not the only
humble maiden of Japan who secretly worshipped the nation’s martial
hero, but possibly her love for him was a more personal thing, because
deep in the girl’s consciousness always was the knowledge that she might
have been worthy of him, had not the irony of fate willed it otherwise,
and set her here, a thing apart from him, caged and guarded by such
surroundings,—she, a daughter of the Prince of Nijo and blood niece to
the Emperor of Japan.
Only three days before the royal fiancée of her hero had arrived at the
palace Aoyama. There, sheltered, nurtured, and watched over, the favored
daughter of the gods, report had said, had gone into maiden retirement
pending her nuptials. Masago thought of her with feelings akin to
hatred, impotent and desperate, but ceaseless. She knew that on the
morrow this Princess Sado-ko would resume her journey to the city of
Tokyo. Soon she would have joined her lover, her future husband, in the
capital.
“To-night,” said Masago, moistening her dry lips, “she will think of
him, and all night long,—it is her privilege. While I—I, too, will think
of him—”
She hid her miserable face within her hands and rocked herself to and
fro, thinking of what the morrow must do for her. She knew that Kamura
Junzo, her affianced, had returned to Kamakura. Had not her parents gone
this very day to attend a family council? Masago had been glad of the
creeping fog which slowly spread across the land, as she knew this would
prevent her parents’ return that night. She had craved for these moments
of maiden privacy. Soon they must cease when she had been given to this
man for wife.
A servant brought Masago her evening tea, which the girl mechanically
drank as she nibbled at the crisp rice cakes. She did not speak to the
attendant while she dined, but continued to stare before her through the
opened shoji. When she had finished, she clapped her hands, at which
signal the tray was carried away.
The shadow and the fog intermingled, darkening the sky without and
deepening the twilight gloom of the room. A little later the servant
returned, bringing a lighted andon, which she set significantly by the
silent girl. Then Masago stirred from her abstraction. She saw the eyes
of the servant upon the picture in her hand. On a sudden, savage impulse
she leaped to her feet and fairly sprung upon the woman, clutching her
by the shoulders.
“Always look! Always see! Foolwoman!” she said in a whisper which was
yet a cry.
The woman shook the hands from her shoulders by simply shrugging the
latter angrily. Then she replied:—
“Eyes are made to look, and when one looks one sees; yet eyes have not
the tongue to tell what they see, Masago.” Turning her back upon the
servant, the girl walked away.
The woman glided soundlessly across the room and disappeared into the
narrow hall outside. Silent as was her going, yet Masago knew she was
gone. She turned about with a sudden movement of passionate feeling.
“The woman knows!” she said, and clasped her hands spasmodically.
Then up and down she paced with unquiet feet, to stand still a moment,
beating her hands softly together and biting the nails, and then again
to pace the room. She threw herself upon the floor. Once again she drew
the picture from her sleeve, to press it to her lips. After a while she
sat up stiffly, as though she listened.
“Some one is without my shoji!” she said, rising uncertainly.
She heard dim voices whispering in the corridor; then suddenly the loud,