Daughters of Nijo: A Romance of Japan
you quite well?”
Masago threw her bare arms above her head, and paced the floor like some
tortured being. Suddenly she turned upon the woman, crying out in an
hysterical way:—
“Why do you stand and stare at me, woman! Oh-h! My head is throbbing,
and my heart beats so—”
She covered her face with her hands. Swiftly the woman withdrew. In the
next room she took her stand by the dividing shoji, watching the one
within.
“She would treat me like the bird,” she said, “and it is dead.”
Masago called her shrilly, harshly.
“Woman! Maid! Do you not hear me calling?”
“I am here, princess!” said the woman, quietly, stepping back into the
room.
“I cannot bear this gown to-night,” said Masago. “It suffocates me. It
is ill-fitting.”
The woman patiently removed the gown, then waited for her mistress to
command her further.
“Take them all off,” said the girl, in an irritated voice. “These and
these.”
She indicated the silk corsets and the frail shoes which gave her such
unstable support. Freed of the foreign garments, she seemed to breathe
with more ease and comfort.
“Now a kimono,—just a simple, plain one.”
The woman brought the plainest one of all. Soon Masago was arrayed in
this.
“Do I appear well to-night?” she asked hysterically.
“Yes, princess.”
“Will not his Royal Highness be astonished at my garb?”
“Enchanted, princess.”
“Enchanted! You speak foolish words! He is a modern prince, this future
Emperor of Japan. He will despise a plain kimono.”
The woman closed her lips.
“Say so,” insisted the girl, wildly. “Agree with me, woman, that when he
sees me in this garb to-night, he will detest the sight of me, and
insist unto his father that he must have another bride. Oh, you do not
speak! How I hate you!”
She was sobbing as she left the room in a breathless, piteous way, for
no tears came to give relief.
Like one in a dream Masago passed through the halls of the Nijo palace.
Soon she was in the great reception hall, where the Crown Prince, guest
of her father, Nijo, awaited her appearance. Her courtesy was
mechanical. She took her place beside him on the slight eminence
reserved for royalty alone.
Masago little cared that night whether her maidens whispered and
gossiped at her whim to appear once more in the national dress. It was
suggested that she wore the gown in compliment to her exalted fiancée.
As the girl surveyed the brilliant spectacle, an intense weariness
overtook her. Half unconsciously she closed her eyes and put her head
back against the tall throne chair upon which she sat. Then Masago
became deaf—blind to all about her. Strange visions of her home passed
through her mind,—her simple home, quiet, peaceful. As in fancy she saw
Ohano’s sympathetic face, she felt an aching longing to hear her
garrulous voice lowered to her in gossip; she saw again her happy,
healthy little brothers, romping in the sunny garden. Even the thought
of Kwacho, grave yet always just and kind, despite his narrow
prejudices, awoke a vague tenderness.
When some one spoke the name of Princess Sado-ko, she roused herself,
then shuddered at the very sound.
“You were so pale, princess, and you closed your eyes just now. I
thought, perchance, that you were ill.” The Crown Prince of Japan spoke
with polite solicitude to the maid Masago. Her eyes filled with heavy
tears.
“Oh, I am homesick—homesick!” she murmured in reply.
He leaned a trifle toward her, as though his boredom were lifted for a
second.
“Are you not at home already, princess?”
She shook her head in mute negation.
“What do you call your home, then?” he inquired.
She answered in a whisper:—
“Kamakura!”
“Ah, yes, the castle Aoyama is there.”
She could not speak further. A page brought tea on a small lacquered
tray. She touched it with her lips, then again relapsed into her
attitude of weariness and languor.
The Crown Prince thought his cousin both stupid and dull. He mentally
decided that her beauty had been overrated. Bright, flashing eyes, rosy
lips, a vivacious countenance, in these days were considered a more
desirable type of beauty than this tired, languid, waxen sort,
mysteriously sad, despite perfection.
He wondered whether her allusion to Kamakura had to do with the famous
artist there, of whom the young prince had heard.
Report had told him that the capricious Sado-ko had treated this plain
artist with familiarity such that the court gossiped. While these
thoughts ran vaguely through his mind, the princess interrupted with a
question:—
“When is the wedding-day?” she asked.
“It is not set,” he replied somewhat stiffly.
Her hands moved restlessly in her lap.
“Are there not other ladies of the royal house more exalted than I?” she
asked.
“None, illustrious princess,” he answered coldly.
She turned her miserable face aside, and stared at the company with eyes
that would fill with tears. Suddenly, hardly conscious of her words, she
exclaimed, in a low, passionate voice:—
“I hate it all! I hate it all!”
The Crown Prince stared in astonishment at her feverishly flushed face.
“I overheard your words, princess,” he said, with forbidding candor. “I
do not know to what you are alluding. The words themselves have an
unseemly sound.”
She pressed her lips together, and sat in bitter silence after that.
Suddenly she became conscious of compelling eyes upon her. She moved and
breathed with a new excitement. Then she heard the Crown Prince speaking
in a sarcastic, drawling way, which already she had begun to dislike.
“Our cousin, here, Komatzu, is sick for Kamakura.”
She turned her helpless eyes upon Komatzu’s face. To her passionate,
hungry eyes he appeared impassive and unmoved. Had the horrible tidings,
then, left him only cold? Were the words of love he had whispered so
often in her ear but the carefully prepared words of a formal suitor?
Was he so much a prince that he could mask his heart behind so
impenetrable a countenance?
Tears, welling up from her aching heart, dropped unheeded from her eyes.
She made no effort to wipe them away, or to conceal her childish grief
and agony. So this lately elevated princess, affianced to a future
emperor, sat by his side in a public place, with tears running down her
face. The Crown Prince was impatient at this display of weak emotion,
she knew, and her action was unbefitting a princess of Japan;
nevertheless she found herself repeating over and over again in her
heart:—
“I am not a princess! I am not a princess! I am only the maid Masago.
That is all. I have been but playing at a masquerade, and I am tired. I
want my home—my parents. My heart is breaking!”
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CHAPTER XXV
THE EVE OF A WEDDING
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CHAPTER XXV
THE EVE OF A WEDDING
IT was the month of Kikuzuki (Chrysanthemum). Summer was dying,—not
dead,—and in her latter moments her beauty was ethereal, though
passionate. The leaves were brown and red. The grass was warmer colored
than at any other time of year. The glorious chrysanthemum, queen of all
the flowers in Japan, lent golden color to the landscape. The skies were
deeply blue. Sometimes, when the sinking sun was slow in fading, its
ruddy tints upon the blue made of the heavens a purple canopy,
enchanting to the sight. Yet with all its beauty November is the month
of tears, for Death, however beautiful, must always wring the heart. So
lovers are pensive and melancholy in their happiness at this sweet, sad
season of the year.
It was the eve before the wedding of the artist and the maid Masago.
Junzo’s artful insistence that he was not strong enough to do without
the helpful nursing of his fiancée had kept her for many days a guest
within his father’s house. Now it wanted but the passing of one night
before the day when the wedding would take place at the house of Kwacho.
Hence the lovers were on their way from the Kamura residence. It was
twilight. The two loitered in their steps along the way, pausing on
every excuse within the woods, the meadow fields, and even on the open
highway. They spoke but little to each other, and then only at
intervals. But when they had approached quite near the house, the girl
said tremulously:—
“When we are married, Junzo, I want to make a little trip with
you—alone.”
“Where, Masago?”
She stopped, looking toward the hills. Then, with one hand on his arm
and the other lifted from her sleeve, she pointed:—
“Look, Junzo, how the royal sun lingers on the palace turrets. It seems
to love Aoyama.”
Junzo surveyed the golden peaks of the palace, shining red in the sunset
glow. His thoughts prevented speech. His mind dwelling on that one who
had once made her home within the palace, he forced his eyes away to
turn them on the dreamy face of his Masago.
“You spoke of a little trip, Masago. Where shall it be, then?”
“Yonder,” she said, still pointing toward the palace.
His face was troubled.
“I do not understand. You do not mean—”
Slowly she nodded her head.
“Yes, I mean to Aoyama, just up there on the hills, my Junzo. It would
be a little journey, and I—I want just once again in my life to loiter
in the gardens.”
“You have already been there, then?” he asked, with some astonishment.
She caught her breath, then simply bowed her head.
“I have been there in fancy, Junzo, or perhaps it was in dreams,” was
her reply. “Will you not go with me sometime, in fact?”
He hesitated, and moved uncomfortably.
“I do not understand your fancy,” he said.
“Well, make the little journey with me, will you not?”
“The palace is not public property,” he answered.
As she did not respond at once, he seized the opportunity to continue
their walk, thinking in this way to divert her. It was growing softly
darker. In the twilight her face was so ethereal and perfect that the
artist could not take his eyes from it. Suddenly she said quite simply:—
“You have fame at court, and so you could obtain a pass to enter the
grounds.”
“Why, have you so strange a fancy, Masago?”
“Is it strange?” she asked, and stopped again. In the dusk of the
woodland lane, her upturned face appeared timid, wistful.
“Yes, it is strange for a maiden of our class, Masago, to wish to enter
royal gardens.”
“Are they not beautiful?” she asked wistfully.
“Beautiful? Perhaps, to some eyes, but to my mind not of that more
desirable beauty nature gives to our more simple gardens.”
“Once you thought the gardens peerless,” she said; “have you forgotten,
Junzo?”
He started violently. Suddenly his hand fell upon her arm. In the dimly
fading light he bent to see her face.
“How can you know of—Masago, your words are strange.”
She laughed in that soft way so reminiscent to him always of that other
one.
“They are not strange, indeed,” she said, “for I have often heard that
you declared the palace grounds were beautiful. But then,” she sighed,
and resumed the walk, “an artist is no less a man, and therefore
fickle.”
They did not speak again until they reached Yamada’s house. At the
little garden gate they paused.
“How quiet all the world seems to-night!” she said.
“You say that in a melancholy tone of voice, Masago.”
“Yes, I am a little melancholy. It is the season and the night. Have you
forgotten, Junzo, that to-morrow—”
He did not let her finish, but seized both her hands.
“How can you ask that question? I think of that to-morrow every second.
To-night I will not sleep.”
“Nor I,” she said.
“What will you do? Tell me, sweet Masago, and I will engage the night in