THE HONORABLE MISS MOONLIGHT

THE

HONORABLE

MISS MOONLIGHT

ONOTO WATANNA

AUTHOR OF

“A JAPANESE NIGHTINGALE”

“TAMA” ETC.

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

M C M X I I

Books by

ONOTO WATANNA

The Honorable Miss Moonlight. Post

8vo net $1.00

A Japanese Nightingale. Illustrated.

Crown 8vo net 2.00

A Japanese Blossom. Illustrated in color.

8vo net 2.00

The Wooing of Wistaria. Illustrated. Post

8vo net 1.50

The Heart of Hyacinth. Illustrated in color.

Crown 8vo net 2.00

Tama. Illustrated. Japan tint paper. Crown

8vo net 1.60

HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1912

H-M

J. W., L. W., AND E. McK.

IN REMEMBRANCE

OF KIND WORDS

THE HONORABLE MISS MOONLIGHT

CHAPTER I

THE day had been long and sultry. It was the season of little heat, when an all-encompassing humidity seemed suspended over the land. Sky and earth were of one monotonous color, a dim blue, which faded to shadowy grayness at the fall of the twilight.

With the approach of evening, a soothing breeze crept up from the river. Its faint movement brought a measure of relief, and nature took on a more animated aspect.

Up through the narrow, twisting roads, in and out of the never-ending paths, the lights of countless jinrikishas twinkled, bound for the Houses of Pleasure. Revelers called to each other out of the balmy darkness. Under the quivering light of a lifted lantern, suspended for an instant, faces gleamed out, then disappeared back into the darkness.

To the young Lord Saito Gonji the night seemed to speak with myriad tongues. Like some finely tuned instrument whose slenderest string must vibrate if touched by a breath, so the heart of the youth was stirred by every appeal of the night. He heard nothing of the chatter and laughter of those about him. For the time at least, he had put behind him that sickening, deadening thought that had borne him company now for so long. He was giving himself up entirely to the brief hour of joy, which had been agreeably extended to him in extenuation of the long life of thralldom yet to come.

It was in his sole honor that the many relatives and connections of his family had assembled, joyously to celebrate the fleeting hours of youth. For within a week the Lord Saito Gonji was to marry. Upon this pale and dreamy youth the hopes of the illustrious house of Saito depended. To him the august ancestors looked for the propagating of their honorable seed. He was the last of a great family, and had been cherished and nurtured for one purpose only.

With almost as rigid care as would have been bestowed upon a novitiate priest, Gonji had been educated.

“Send the child you love upon a journey,” admonished the stern-hearted Lady Saito Ichigo to her husband; and so at the early age of five the little Gonji was sent to Kummumotta, there to be trained under the strictest discipline known to the samourai. Here he developed in strength and grace of body; but, seemingly caught in some intangible web, the mind of the youth awoke not from its dreams. His arm had the strength of the samourai, said his teachers, but his spirit and his heart were those of the poet.

There came a period when he was placed in the Imperial University, and a new life opened to the wondering youth. New laws, new modes of thought, the alluring secrets of strange sciences, baffling and fascinating, all opened their doors to the infatuated and eager Gonji. With the enthusiasm born of his solitary years, the boy grasped avidly after the ideals of the New Japan. His career in college was notable. In him professor and student recognized the born leader and genius. He was to do great things for Japan some day!

Then came a time when the education of the youth was abruptly halted, and he was ordered to return to his home. While his mind was still engaged in the fascinating employment of planning a career, his parents ceremoniously presented him to Ohano, a girl he had known from childhood and a distant relative of his mother’s family. Mechanically and obediently the dazed Gonji found himself exchanging with the maiden the first gifts of betrothal.

Ohano was plump, with a round, somewhat sullen face, a pouting, full-lipped mouth, and eyes so small they seemed but mere slits in her face. She had inherited the inscrutable, disdainful expression of her lofty ancestors.

Though he had played with her as a child and had seen her upon every occasion during his school vacations, Gonji looked at her now with new eyes. As a little boy he had liked Ohano. She was his sole playmate, and it had been his delight to tease her. Now, as he watched her stealthily, he was consumed with a sense of unutterable despair. Could it be that his fairest dreams were to end with Ohano?

Like every other Japanese youth, who knows that some day his proper mate will be chosen and given to him, Gonji had conjured up a lovely, yielding creature of the imagination, a gentle, smiling, mysterious Eve, who, like a new world, should daily surprise and delight him. As he looked at Ohano, sitting placidly and contentedly by his side, he was conscious only of an inner tumult of rebellion and repulsion against the chains they were forging inexorably about him and this girl. It was impossible, he felt, to drag him nearer to her. The very thought revolted, stunned him, and suddenly, rudely, he turned his back upon his bride.

The relatives agreed that something should be done to offset the gloom of the first stages of betrothal. It was suggested that the bridegroom have a full week of freedom. As was the custom among many, he should for the first time be introduced to the life of gaiety and pleasure that lay outside the lofty, ancestral walls, the better, later, to appreciate the calm and pure joys of home and family.

In single file the jinrikishas had been running along a narrow road which overlooked city and bay. Now they swerved into shadowy by-paths and plunged into the heart of the woods. A velvety darkness, through which the drivers picked their way with caution, enwrapped them.

For some time the tingling music of samisen and drum close by had been growing ever clearer. Suddenly the glimmer of many lights was seen, as if suspended overhead. Almost unconsciously faces were raised, excited breaths drawn in admiration and approval. Like a great sparkling jewel hung in mid-air, the House of Slender Pines leaned over its wooded terraces toward them.

Gay little mousmés, rubbing hands and knees together, ran to meet them at the gate, kowtowing and hissing in obeisance. The note of a samisen was heard; and a thin little voice, sweet, and incredibly high, broke into song. Geishas, with great flowers in their hair, fell into a posturing group, dancing with hand, head, and fan. Gonji watched them in a fascinated silence, noting the minutest detail of their attire, their expression, their speech. They belonged to a world which, till now, he had not been permitted even to explore. Nay, till but recently he had been rigidly guarded from even the slightest possible contact with these little creatures of joy. Soon he was to be set in the niche destined for him by his ancestors. Here was his sole opportunity to seize the fleeting delights of youth.

A laughing-faced mousmé, red-lipped and with saucy, teasing eyes that peeped at him from beneath veiled lashes, knelt to hold his sake-tray. He leaned gravely toward the girl and examined her face with a curious wonder; but her smile brought no response to the somewhat sad and somber lips of the young man, nor did he even deign to sip the fragrant cup she tendered.

An elder cousin offered some chaffing advice, and an hilarious uncle suggested that the master of the house put his geishas upon parade; but the father of Gonji roughly interposed, declaring that his son’s thoughts, naturally, were elsewhere. It was so with all expectant bridegrooms. His father’s words awoke the boy from his dreaming. He turned very pale and trembled. His head drooped forward, and he felt an irresistible inclination to cover his face with his hands. His father’s voice sounded in gruff whisper at his ear:

“Pay attention. You see now the star of the night. It is the famous Spider, spinning her web!”

As Gonji slowly raised his head and gazed like one spellbound at the dancer, his father added, with a sudden vehemence:

“Take care, my son, lest she entrap thee, too, like the proverbial fly.”

A hush had fallen upon the gardens. Almost it seemed as if the tiny feet of the dancer stirred not at all. Yet, with imperceptible advances, she moved nearer and nearer to her fascinated audience. Above her flimsy gown of sheerest veiling, which sprang like a web on all sides and above her, her face shone with its marvelous beauty and allurement. Her lips were apart, smiling, coaxing, teasing; and her eyes, wide and very large, seemed to seek over the heads of her audience for the one who should prove her prey. It was the final motion of the dance of the Spider, the seeking for, the finding, the seizing of her imaginary victim. Now the Spider’s eyes had ceased to wander. They were fixed compellingly upon those of the Lord Saito Gonji.

He had arisen to his feet, and with a half-audible exclamation—a sound of an indrawn sigh—he advanced toward the dancer. For a moment, breathlessly, he stood close beside her. The subtle odor of her perfumed hair and body stole like a charm over his senses. Her sleeve fluttered against his hand for but the fraction of a moment, yet thrilled and tormented him. He looked at the Spider with the eyes of one who sees a new and radiant wonder. Then darkness came rudely between them. The geisha’s face vanished with the light. He was standing alone, staring into the darkness, his father’s voice droning meaninglessly in his ear.

CHAPTER II

HER real name was as poetical as the one she was known by was forbidding and repelling. Moonlight, it was; though all the gay world which hovers about a famous geisha, like flies over the honey-pot, knew her solely as the “Spider.”

“Spider” she was called because of the peculiar dance she had originated. It was against all classical precedents, but of so exceptional a character that in a night, a single hour, as it were, she found herself from a humble little apprentice the most celebrated geisha in Kioto, that paradise of geishas.

It was a day of golden fortune for Matsuda, who owned the girl. She had been bound to his service since the age of seven with bonds as drastic as if the days of slavery still existed.

Harsh, cunning, even cruel to the many girls in his employ, Matsuda had yet one vulnerable point. That was his overwhelming affection for the geisha he had married, and she was afflicted with a malady of the brain. Some said it was due to the death of her many children, all of whom had succumbed to an infectious disease. From whatever misfortune, the gentle Okusama, as they called her in the geisha-house, was at intervals blank-minded. Still she, the harmless, gentle creature, was loved by the geishas; and, as far as it lay in her power, she was their friend, and often saved them from the wrath of Matsuda. It was into her empty bosom the little Moonlight had crept and found a warm and loving home. With a yearning as deep as though the child were her own, the wife of Matsuda watched over the child. It was under her tutelage that Moonlight learned all the arts of an accomplished geisha. In her time the wife of Matsuda had been very famous, too, and no one knew better than she, soft of mind and witless as she was at times, the dances and the songs of the geisha-house.

Matsuda had watched with some degree of irritation, not unmixed with a peculiar jealousy, his wife’s absorption in the tiny Moonlight. He did not approve of gentle treatment toward a mere apprentice. It was only by harsh measures that a girl could properly learn the severe profession. Later, when she had mastered all the intricate arts and graces, then, perhaps, one might prove lenient. It was no uncommon thing for a geisha to be pampered and spoiled, but an apprentice, never!

However, the child seemed to make happier the lot of the beloved Okusama, and there was nothing to be done about the matter.

Disliking the child, Matsuda nevertheless recognized from the first her undoubted beauty, the thing which had induced him, in fact, to pay an exceptional price to her guardians for her. He had little faith in her future as a geisha, however, since his wife chose to pet and protect her. How was it possible for her to learn from the poor, witless Okusama? When the latter joyously jabbered of the little one’s wonderful progress, Matsuda would smile or grunt surlily.

Then, one day, walking in the woods, he had come, unexpectedly, upon the posturing child, tossing her little body from side to side like a wind-blown flower, while his wife picked two single notes upon the samisen. Matsuda watched them dumb-smitten. Was it possible, he asked himself, that the Okusama had discovered what he had overlooked? But he brushed the thought aside. These were merely the precocious antics of a spoiled child. They would not be pretty in one grown to womanhood. There was much to do in the geisha-house. The fame of his gardens must be kept assiduously before the public. Matsuda had no time for the little Moonlight, save, chidingly, to frown upon her when she was not in the presence of the Okusama. And so, almost unobserved by the master of the geisha-house, Moonlight came to the years of maidenhood.

One night the House of Slender Pines was honored by the unexpected advent of most exalted guests. The chief geishas were absent at an entertainment, and Matsuda was in despair. He was forced, consequently, to put the novices into service, and while he bit his nails frenziedly at the awkward movements of the apprentices, Moonlight slipped to his side and whispered in his ear that she was competent to dance as beautifully as the chief geishas. As he stared at her in wrathful irritation, his wife glided to his other side and joined the girl in pleading. Gruffly he consented. Matters could not be much worse. What mattered it now? He was already disgraced in the eyes of the most high. Well, then, let this pet apprentice do her foolish dance.

Moonlight seized her opportunity with the gay avidity of the gambler who tosses his all upon a final chance. At the risk of meeting the fearful displeasure of her master, the ridicule, disdain, and even hatred of the older geishas, whom it was her duty to imitate, the girl danced before the most critical audience in Kioto.

Her triumph was complete. It may have been the novelty or mystery of her dance, the hypnotic perfection of her art; it may have been her own surpassing beauty—no one sought to analyze the source of her peculiar power. Before the smiling, coaxing witchery of her eyes and lips they fell figuratively, and indeed literally, upon their knees.

She became the mad furore and fashion of the hour. Poets indited lyrics to her respective features. Princes flung gifts at her feet. People traveled from the several quarters of the empire to see her. And at this most dangerous period of her career the young Lord Saito Gonji, last of one of the most illustrious families in Japan, crossed her path.

CHAPTER III

HIS honorable mother declared that Gonji was afflicted with a malady of the stomach. She proffered warm drinks and poultices and sought to induce him to remain in bed. Now that the long and severe years of discipline had passed and her son was at last at home with her, all of the natural mother within her, which had been repressed so long, yearned over her only son. Even her cold and somewhat repelling manner showed a softening.

Had he not been at this time absorbed in his own dreams, Gonji would have met half-way the pathetic advances of his mother; but he was oblivious to the change in her. He insisted politely that his health was excellent, begged to be excused, and wandered off by himself.

His father, whose mighty business interests were in Tokio, abandoned them for the time being and remained by his son’s side in Kioto, following the young man assiduously, seeking vainly to arouse him from the melancholy lethargy into which he had fallen. Deep in the heart of the elder Lord Saito was the acute knowledge of what troubled his son, for afflicted he undoubtedly was, as all the relatives unanimously and officiously averred. Such a funereal countenance was unbefitting a bridegroom. One would think the unhappy youth was being driven to his tomb, rather than to the bridal bed!

The parents and relatives vied with each other in importuning the unfortunate Gonji, and sought to distract him from what were evidently his own morbid thoughts. Also they sought to entrap his confidence. Gonji kept his counsel, and from day to day he grew paler, thinner, more silent, and sad.

“Call in the services of the mightiest of honorable physicians and surgeons,” ordered the Lady Saito. “It may be an operation will relieve our son.”

Her husband, thoughtful, sad, a prey to an uneasy conscience, shook his head dumbly.

“It is not possible for the honorable knife to efface a cancer of the heart,” said he, sighing.

“Hasten the nuptials,” suggested the uncle of Ohano. “There is no medicine which acts with as drastic force as a wife.”

This time the Lord Saito Ichigo was even more emphatic in negativing the suggestion.

“There is time enough,” he asserted, gruffly. “I will not begrudge my son at least the short and precious time which should precede the ceremony. This is his period of diversion. It shall not be cut in half.”

The brusque words of the head of the Saito house aroused the ire of the nearest relative of the bride. He said complainingly:

“It does not seem as if the honorable bridegroom desires to avail himself of his prenuptial privileges. He does not seek the usual diversions of youth at this time. Is it not unnatural to prefer solitude?”

“It is a matter of choice,” contended the father of Gonji, with curt pride.

“But if it injure his health, is it not the duty of the relatives to assist him?”

“The gates of the saito are wide open. My son is not a prisoner. He is at liberty to go whithersoever he pleases. It is apparent that his pleasures lie not outside the ancestral home of his fathers.”

“That,” said the uncle of Ohano, suavely, “is because he still stumbles in the period of adolescence. It is necessary he be instructed.”

The father of Gonji pondered the matter somberly, pulling with thumb and forefinger at his lower lip. After a moment he said, with sudden determination:

“You are right, Takedo Isami. Your superior suggestion is gratefully received. Since my son will not seek the pleasures of youth, let us bring them to our house. It is necessary immediately to arouse him from a youthful despair which may tend to injure his health.”

He looked up and met the cunning eye of his prospective kinsman regarding him with a peculiar expression. Ichigo added, gruffly but sturdily:

“It would be an excellent programme to secure the services of the honorable Spider of the House of Slender Pines. I pray you undertake the matter for me. See Matsuda, the master of the house. Spare no expense in the matter.”

The expression on Takedo’s face was now enigmatic. He emptied his pipe slowly and with deliberation, as if in thought. Then solemnly he bobbed his bald head, as if in assent. The two old men then arose, shaking their skirts and hissing perfunctorily. Their bows were formal, and the words of parting the usual friendly and polite ones; but each met the eye of the other, and both understood; and, strangely, a sense of antagonism arose between them.

CHAPTER IV

SO it was in the honorable house of his father, and of the hundred august ancestors whom they accused him of dishonoring, that Gonji again saw the Spider.

Into the houses of the most exalted the geisha flutters with the free familiarity of a pampered house pet. No festivity, however private, is considered complete without her. She is as necessary as the flowers that bedeck the house, the viands, and the sake.

Upon a humid night in the season of greatest heat, and in the glow of a thousand fireflies, the Spider danced in the gardens of the house of Saito. Her kimono was vermilion, embroidered with dragons of gold. Gold too were her obi and her fan, and red and gold were the ornaments that glistened like fire in her hair. Yet more brilliant, more sparklingly, gleamed and shone the eyes of the dancer, and her scarlet lips were redder than the poppies in her hair, and held an hypnotic allure for the Lord Saito Gonji, watching her in a breathless silence that fairly pained him.

Every gesture, every slightest flutter of her sleeve, her hand, her fan, every smallest turn or motion of her bewitching head, was directed at the guest of honor, the son and heir of the house of Saito. For him alone she seemed to dance. To him she threw her joyous smiles, and, in the end, when the dance was done, it was at his feet she knelt, raising her naïvely coy, half-questioning glance. Then, very softly and with gentle solicitation:

“At your sole honorable service, noble lord,” she said. “What is your pleasure next?”

He said, like one awakening from some strange dream or trance:

“It is my pleasure, geisha, that you look into my eyes.”

She glanced up timidly, as if troubled and surprised. A wistfully joyous light came into her dark eyes; then they remained unmovingly fixed upon his. Very softly, that those about them might not hear, he whispered:

“I saw your face dimly in the firefly-light. I was possessed with but one ambition—to look into your eyes!”

Her pretty head drooped so low that now it touched his knee. At the contact he trembled and drew sharply away from her. Alarmed, fearing she had unwittingly offended him, she raised her head and looked at him with a mutely questioning glance. There was a cloud, dark and very melancholy, upon the face of the one she had been ordered to entertain. She thought of the instructions of Matsuda: that it should be her paramount duty to beguile and distract the Lord Saito Gonji. Her fortune for life might be made by succeeding in arousing him to a joyous mood. But, lo! the one she sought to please drew back from her, gloomy, troubled.

Her rapid rise to fame had not brought to the Spider the peculiar joy she had anticipated. Fame carries ever with it its bitter savor, and, although she had not alone become the darling of the celebrated geisha-house, but had brought fame and fortune to her master, many of the things she had most cared for she had been obliged to forego in her new position as star of the House of Slender Pines.

No longer was it possible for her to be shielded by the loving arms of the Okusama. Out into the broadest limelight even the delighted Okusama had pushed her, and this blinding light entailed a thousand duties of which she had only vaguely heard from the patronizing elder geishas. She had ceased to be the cuddled and petted little Moonlight, loved and stroked and tossed about by the geishas, because of her beauty and ingenuous wit. Suddenly she had become the Spider! It was a new and fearful name that terrified her.

Matsuda, proud of her success, and at last completely won over, surrounded her with every luxury. So far he had forced upon the girl none of the odious exactions often demanded of the geishas by their masters, even though the law had defined the exact services to which he was legally entitled.

A thousand lovers a geisha might have, said the unwritten law, but to possess one alone was fatal! She must place a guard of iron before her heart! A geisha must sip at love as the bee culls the honey from the blossom, lingering but a moment over each. The rivers and the many pits of death were filled with the bodies of the hapless ones who had gone outside this law, who had dared to permit the passionate heart to escape beyond the prescribed bounds.

Moonlight, with all the witching arts of the geisha at her finger-tips, with a beauty as rare and mysterious as though she were a princess of some new world, had found it thus far an easy task to follow the rules laid down for her class. Like a fragile flower that must not be touched lest its bloom be soiled, the master of the geisha-house jealously protected his star from all possible contamination. She was held out as a lure to captivate and draw to his house the rich and noble ones; but, like some precious jewel in a casket, she was but to be seen, not touched! Matsuda was determined to save his most precious possession for the highest of bidders. Now his patience had met its due reward. The most illustrious head of the house of the exalted Saito solicited his services!

So, while Matsuda gloated over the rich reward to be reaped surely from his lordly patron, the Spider was looking with frightened eyes into those of the Lord Saito Gonji, and she trembled and turned very pale under his somber glance. All her gay insouciance, her saucy, quick repartee, the teasing, witching little graces for which she now was noted, seemed to have deserted her. It troubled her that she was unable to obey the command of her master and make his most noble patron smile. Within the piercing eyes which sought her own she seemed to read only some tragic question, which, alas, she felt unable to answer.

“I desire to please you, noble sir,” she said, plaintively, and added, with an impulsive motion of her little hands: “Alas! It is my duty!”

For the first time a faint smile quivered across the young man’s lips; but he did not speak. He continued to regard her in that musing fashion, as though he studied every feature of her face and drank in its loveliness with something of resignation and despair.

His curious silence affected her. Was it not possible to arouse the strange one, then, to some animation and interest? Timidly she put out her hand—a mute, charming little gesture—then rested it upon his own. As though her touch had some electric power which stirred him to the depths, he leaned suddenly toward her, inclosing her hand in a close, almost painful grip. Now hungrily, pleadingly, his look enveloped her. His voice trembled with the emotion he sought vainly to control.

“Geisha, if it were possible—if we belonged in another land—if it were not for the customs of the ancestors—I would tell you what is in my heart!”

Like a child, wondering and curious, she answered:

“I pray you, tell me! To keep a troubled secret is like carrying a cup brim full!”

“I will ask you a question,” he said incisively. “Wilt thou be my wife for all the lives yet to come?”

As he spoke the forbidden words the Spider turned very pale. She sought to withdraw her trembling hands from his, but he held to them with a passionate tenacity. She could not speak. She could but look at him mutely, piteously; and her lovely, pleading gaze but added to the man’s distraction.

“Answer me!” he entreated. “Make me the promise, beautiful little mousmé!”

His vehemence and passion frightened her. She tried to avert her face, to turn it aside from his burning gaze; but he brought his own insistently close to hers. She could not escape his impelling eyes. At last, her bosom heaving up and down like a little troubled sea, she stammered:

“You speak so strangely, noble sir. I—I—am but—a geisha of the House of Slender Pines. Thou art as far above my sphere as—as—are the honorable stars in the heavens.”

Her voice had a quality of exquisite terror, as though she sought vainly to thrust aside some hypnotic force to which she yearned to yield. It aroused but the ardor of her lover.

“It is not possible,” he murmured, “for one to be above thee, little geisha. Thou art lovelier than all the visions of the esteemed Sun Lady herself. I am thy lover for all time. I desire to possess thee utterly in all the lives yet to come. Make me the promise, beautiful mousmé, that thou wilt travel with me—that thou wilt be mine, mine only!”

She drew back as far from him as it was possible, with her hands jealously held by his own. Her wide, frightened eyes were fixed in terror upon his.

“I cannot speak the words!” she gasped. “I dare not speak them, august one!”

For a moment his face, which had been lighted by excitement and passion, darkened.

“You cannot then return my love?”

“Ah! They are not words for a geisha to speak. It is not for such as I to make the long journey with one so illustrious as thou!”

A sob broke from her, and because she could no longer bear to meet his burning gaze she hid her face with the motion of a child against their clasped hands.

For a long moment there was silence between them. Louder, noisier, rose the mirth of the revelers about them. A dozen geishas pulled at the three-stringed instruments. As many more swayed and moved in the figures of the classical dance. Like great, gaudy butterflies, their bright wings fluttering behind them, the moving figures of the tea-maidens passed before them. Almost it seemed as if they two had been purposely set apart and forgotten. No one approached them. With concerted caution, all avoided a glance in the direction of the guest of honor and the famous one who had been chosen to beguile and save him. How well she had performed her task one could see in the beaming face of Matsuda, the uneasy face of the elder Lord Saito, and the somewhat scowling one of the uncle of Ohano.

The Lord Gonji saw nothing of the relatives. He was oblivious indeed of everything save the shining, drooped little head upon his hands. Scarcely he knew his own voice, so superlatively gentle and wooing was its tone.

“I pray you, give me complete happiness with the promise, beloved one,” he entreated.

She raised her head slowly; and gravely, wistfully, her eyes now questioned him. Dimly she realized the effect of such a union upon his haughty family and the ancestors.

She was but a geisha, a cultivated toy, educated for the one purpose of beguiling men and making their lot brighter. Like the painted and grotesque comedian who tortured his limbs to make others laugh, so it was the duty of a geisha to keep ever the laugh upon her lips, even though the heart within her broke. It was not possible that to her, a mere dancing girl, one was offering the entrancing opportunity of which lovers whisper to each other. Her face was very pinched and white, the eyes startlingly large, as she answered him:

“I dare not speak the words, noble sir. I do not know the way. The Meido is very far off. We meet but once. Your honorable parents and the ancestors would turn back one so humble and insignificant as I.”

“The honorable parents,” he gently explained, “can but point our duty in the present life. In the lives yet to come we choose our own companions. If I could—if it were possible—how gladly would I take thee also for this present life.”

She drew back, puzzled, vaguely distressed.

“You—you do not wish me now also?” she stammered, and there was a shocked, dazed note in her voice. He saw what was in her mind, and it startled him.

“Do you not know why they have summoned you here to-night?” he questioned.

“At—at the command of my master,” she faltered. “I am here to—to please thee, noble sir. If it please thee to make a jest—”

She broke off piteously and tried to smile. Her hands slipped from his as he arose suddenly and looked down at her solemnly, where she still knelt at his feet.

“You are here,” he said, “to celebrate my honorable betrothal to Takedo Ohano-san.”

She did not move, but continued to stare up at him with the dumb-stricken look of one unjustly punished. Then suddenly she sobbed, and her little head rested upon the ground at his feet.

“Geisha!” He called to her sharply, commandingly, and yet with a world of pleading emotion. Matsuda, hovering near, turned and looked loweringly at the girl on the ground. Her face was humbly in the dust at the feet of the Lord Saito Gonji. It was a position unworthy of a geisha, and Matsuda moved furiously nearer to them. This was the work of the Okusama, inwardly he fumed. Now when the geisha was put to the greatest test she was found wanting. At the feet of the man when he should have knelt at hers.

“Geisha!”

This time there was nothing but tenderness in his voice. He was conscious of the fact that the girl at his feet was suffering. He loved her, and was sure that life without her would be both intolerable and worthless. He had begged her to travel with him upon the final “long journey.” She, in her simple innocence, believed he had asked her in marriage for this life also. Now, humiliated, she dared not look at him.

Down he knelt beside her; but when he sought to put his arms about her, she sprang wildly to her feet. Not for a moment did she pause, but like some hunted, terrified thing fled fleetly across the garden.

He started to follow, but stopped suddenly, blinded by the sudden excess of madness and rage that swept over him. For, as she ran, her master, Matsuda, doubled over in her path. His face was purple. His wicked little eyes glittered like one gone insane, and his great thick lips fell apart, showing the teeth like tusks of some wild beast. Gonji saw the shining doubled fists as they rose in the air and descended upon the head of the hapless Spider. Then he sprang forward like a madman, leaping at the throat of Matsuda and tossing him aside like some unclean thing.

She lay unmoving upon her back, her arms cast out like the wings of a bird on either side. Gonji caught her up in his arms with a cry that rang out weirdly over the gardens. It stopped the mirth of the revelers and brought them in a hushed group about the pair. Now silence reigned in the gardens of the Saito.

On the upper floor of the mansion the walls had been pushed entirely out so that an open pavilion, flower-laden, made a charming retreat for the “honorable interiors,” the ladies of the family, who might not, with propriety, join their lords in the revelry. Here, unseen, these “precious jewels of the household” might watch the celebration; but it was the part of the geisha to entertain their lord. Theirs the lot to receive him when, weary and worn, he must eventually return for rest.

Now, from their sake-sipping the ladies were aroused by that cry of Saito Gonji. Over the lantern-hung, flower-laden trellis they leaned, their shrill voices sounding strangely in the silence that had fallen upon the entire company. Some one lighted a torch and swung it above the group on the ground. Under its light the mother of Gonji, and his bride, Ohano, saw the form of the Spider; and beside her, enveloping her in his arms, whispering to and caressing her, was the Lord Saito Gonji.

Japanese women are trained to hide their deepest emotions. All the world tells of their impassive stoicism; but human nature is human nature, after all. So the bride shrieked like one who has lost his mind, but the cry was strangled ere it was half uttered. When the Lady Saito’s hand was withdrawn from the mouth of the bride, the pallid-faced Ohano slipped humbly to her knees, and, shaking like a leaf in a storm, stammered:

“I—I—b-but laughed at the antics of the comedians. Oh, d-d-d-did you see—”

Here she broke off and hid her face, with a muffled sob, upon the breast of the elder woman. Without a word the latter led the girl inside, and the maidens drew the shoji into place, closing the floor.

CHAPTER V

“OMI! Omi! Are you there? Wretched little maiden, why do you not come?” The Spider peered vainly down through the patch in her floor. Then, at the faint sound of a sliding foot without, she slapped the section of matting into place again and fell to work in panic haste upon her embroidery.

A passing geisha thrust in a curious face through the screens and wished her a pleasant day’s work. The Spider responded cheerfully and showed her little white teeth in the smile her associates knew so well. But the instant the geisha had glided out of sight she was back at the patch again. She called in a whisper: “Omi! Omi! Omi-san!” but no answering treble child-voice responded.

For a while she crouched over the patch and sought to peer down into the passage below. As she knelt, something sharp flew up and smote against her cheek. She grasped at it. Then, hastily closing the patch and, with stealthy looks about her, pausing a moment with alert ears to listen, she opened at last the note. It was crushed about a pebble, and was written on the thinnest of tissue-paper.

Moonlight drank in avidly the burning words of love in the poem. Her eyes were shining and brilliant, her cheeks and lips as red as the poppies in her hair, when Matsuda thrust back the sliding screens and entered the chamber. He said nothing to the smiling geisha, but contented himself with scrutinizing her in a calculating manner, as though he summarized her exact value. Then, with a jerk or nod apparently of satisfaction, he left the room, and the girl was enabled to reread the beloved epistle.

A few moments later the screens which Matsuda had carefully closed behind him were cautiously parted a space, and the thin, impish, pert, and precocious face of a little girl of thirteen was thrust in. She made motions with her lips to the Spider, who laughed and nodded her head.

Omi—for it was she—slipped into the room. She was an odd-looking little creature, her body as thin as her wise little face, above which her hair was piled in elaborate imitation of the coiffure of her mistress and preceptress. She fell to work at once, solicitously arranging the dress and hair of the Spider and complaining bitterly that the maids had neglected, shamefully, her beloved mistress’s toilet.

“Although it is not the proper work for an apprentice-geisha,” she rattled along, “yet I myself will serve your honorable body, rather than permit it to suffer from such pernicious neglect.”

She smoothed the little hands of her mistress, manicured and perfumed them, talking volubly all the time upon every subject save the one the Spider was waiting to hear about. At last, unable to bear it longer, Moonlight broke in abruptly:

“How you chatter of insignificant matters! You tease me, Omi. I shall have to chastise you. Tell me in a breath about the matter.”

Omi grinned impishly, but at the reproachful look of her mistress her natural impulse to torment even the one she loved best in the world gave way. She began in a gasp, as though she had just come hastily into the room.

“Oh, oh, you would never, never believe it in the world. Nor could I, indeed, had I not seen it with my own insignificant eyes.”

“Yes, yes, speak quickly!” urged the Spider, eagerly hanging upon the words of the apprentice.

Omi drew in and expelled her breath in long, sibilant hisses after the manner of the most exalted of aristocrats.

“There are six of them at the gates, not to count the servants and runners down the road!”

Moonlight looked at her incredulously, and Omi nodded her head with vigor.

“It is so. I counted each augustness.” She began enumerating upon her fingers. “There was the high-up Count Takedo Isami, Takedo Sachi, Takedo—there were four Takedos. Then the Lord Saito Takamura Ichigo, Saito—”

“Do not enumerate them, Omi. Tell me instead how you came, in spite of the watchful ones, in spite, too, of Matsuda, to reach his lordship.”

As she spoke the last word reverently, a flush deepened in her cheeks and her eyes shone upon the apprentice with such a lovely light that the adoring little girl cried out sharply:

“It is true, Moonlight-san! Thou art lovelier than Ama-terasu-o-mi-kami!”

“Hush, foolish one, that is blasphemy. Indeed I should be very unhappy did I outshine the august lady of the sun in beauty. But no more digressions. If you do not tell me—and tell me at once—exactly what happened—how you reached the side of his lordship—how he looked—just how! What was said—the very words—how he spoke—acted. Did he smile, or was he sad, Omi? Tell me—tell me, please!” She ended coaxingly; but, as the pert little apprentice merely smiled tantalizingly, she added, very severely:

“It may be I will look about for a new understudy. There is Ochika—”

At the mention of her rival’s name Omi made a scornful grimace, but she answered quickly:

“The Okusama helped me. She pretended an illness. Matsuda was afraid, and remained by her side, chafing her hands and her head.” She laughed maliciously, and continued: “I slipped out by the bamboo-hedge gate. Omatsu saw me—” At the look of alarm on the Spider’s face: “Pooh! what does it matter? Every servant in the house—ah! and the maids and apprentices—yes, and the most honorable geishas too—know the secret, and they wish you well, sweet mistress!”

She squeezed Moonlight’s hands with girlish fervor, and the latter returned the pressure lovingly, but besought her to continue.

“The main gates were closed. Just think! No one is admitted even to the gardens. Why, ’tis like the days of feudalism. We are in a fortress, with the enemy on all sides!”

“Oh, Omi, you let your imagination run away with you, and I hang upon your words, waiting to hear what has actually happened.”

“I am telling you. It is exactly as I have said. Matsuda dares not offend the powerful family of the Saito, and it is at their command that the gates of the House of Slender Pines are closed rigorously to all the public. No one dare enter. No one dare—go out—save—I!” and she smiled impudently. “It is said”—lowering her voice confidentially—“that Matsuda has been paid a vast sum of ‘cash’ to keep his house closed. Mistress, there are great notices in black and white nailed upon the line of trees clear down the road. ‘The House of Slender Pines is closed for the season of greatest heat!’ And just think,” and the little apprentice-geisha pouted, “not a koto or a samisen is permitted to be touched! Who ever heard of a geisha-house as silent as a mortuary hall? It is very sad. We wish to sing and dance and court the smiles of noble gentlemen; but you have made such a mess with your honorable love affair that every geisha and every apprentice is being punished! We are not permitted to speak above a whisper. Our lovers must stand beyond the gates and serenade us themselves. It is—”

“Oh, Omi, you wander so! Now tell me, sweet girl, exactly what I am perishing to know.”

“I will, duly! You preach patience to me so often,” declared the impish little creature; “now you must practise it also. I resume my narrative. Pray do not interrupt so often, as it delays my story.” With that she leisurely proceeded.

“Mistress, the entire gardens of the House of Slender Pines are patrolled—yes, and by armed samourai!”

“Samourai! You speak nonsense. There is no such thing to-day as a samourai. Swords, moreover, are not permitted. Omi, you are tormenting me, and it is very unkind and ungrateful. You will force me to punish you very severely, much as I love you!”

“It is as I have said. I speak only the truth. The ones who guard our house are exalted ones—samourai by birth at least, relatives of his lordship. They do not permit even the smallest aperture to be unwatched, whereby his lordship might slip into the gardens, and from thence into my mistress’s chamber—”

“Omi!”

“—for it has gone abroad through all the Saito clan that the peace of the most honorable ancestors is about to be imperiled.”

Moonlight’s color was dying down, and as the little girl proceeded her two hands stole to her breast and clung to where the love poem was hidden.

“As the relatives cannot by entreaty force his lordship from your vicinity, loveliest of mistresses, they are bent upon guarding him, in case by the artful intrigues known only to lovers”—and the little maiden shook her head with precocious wisdom—“he may actually reach your side despite the care of Matsuda.”

Moonlight now seemed scarcely to be listening. She was looking out dreamily before her, and her fancy conjured up the inspired face of her lover. She felt again the warm touch of his lips against her hair, and heard the ardent, passionate promise he had made in the little interval when she had come to consciousness within his arms there in the gardens of his ancestors. “If it is impossible to have you—ay, in this very life—then I will wed no other. No! though the voices of all the ancestors shout to me to do my duty!”

Now she knew he was very near to her. For days they had been unable to induce him to leave the vicinity of her home. Outside the gates of the closed geisha-house he had taken his stand, there to importune the implacable Matsuda and try vainly, by every ruse and device, to reach her side.

Though she knew that never for a moment would the watchful relatives permit him to be alone, still at last he had eluded them sufficiently to send her word through the clever little Omi. Now she listened with tingling ears, as Omi glibly and with exaggeration told how, as she flew by on her skipping-rope, he had slipped the note into her sleeve. Only this acute child could have outwitted Matsuda in this way. A few moments of hiding in the deserted ozashiki, a chance to toss the note aloft to her mistress, and then to await her opportunity when the lower halls should be clear and slip upstairs! Apprentices were not permitted to be thus at large, and Omi knew that, if caught, her punishment would be quite dreadful; but she gaily took the risk for her beloved mistress.

She sat back now on her heels, having finished her recital. She watched Moonlight, as the latter read and reread her love missive. Much to the disappointment of the little maiden, her mistress did not read it aloud. The sulky pout, however, soon faded from the girl’s lips, as her mistress put her cheek against Omi’s thin little one. With arms enclasped, the two sat in silence, watching the falling of the twilight; and in the mind of each one solitary figure stood clearly outlined. His features were delicate, his arched eyebrows as sensitive as a poet’s, his lips as full and pouting as a child’s. His eyes were large and long and somewhat melancholy, but there were latent hints within them of a stronger power capable of awakening. Upon his face was that ineffaceable stamp of caste, and it lent a charm to the youth’s entire bearing.

A maid pattered into the apartment and lit the solitary andon. Its wan light added but a feeble gleam in the darkened room. Presently she returned, bearing the simple meal for the geisha and her apprentice. When this was finished, with the aid of Omi she spread the sleeping-quilts and snuffed the andon light. It was the orders of Matsuda that the house should be darkened at the hour when previously it was lighted most gaily. There was nothing left for them to do save go to bed. Yet for some time, in the darkened chamber, with its closed walls, the two remained whispering and planning; and once the watchful maid upon her sleeping-mat outside the screens heard the soft, musical laughter of the famous geisha, and the servant sighed uneasily. She did not like this work assigned her by Matsuda.

In the middle of the night Omi, turning on the quilts, missed her mistress at her side. Arising, she felt along the floor beside her. Then, alarmed, she slipped out from under the netting. It was a clear moonlight night, and a golden stream came into the room through the widely opened shoji. Leaning against it, with her dreamy head resting upon the trellis, was her mistress. By the light of the moon she held the shimmering sheets of tissue-paper, and over these she still pored and wept.

CHAPTER VI

OF the once flourishing and numerous family of the Saito, there were but two male members living, Saito Gonji, and his father, Saito Ichigo. The relatives of the Lady Saito were, however, numerous, and, like the mother of Gonji, they possessed stern and domineering dispositions. In contrast, her husband was easy-going and genial, and it had been an easy matter, in consequence, thus far, for the relatives to rule the head of the illustrious house. Lord Ichigo had even followed their counsel in the matter of the education of his boy, although it had cut him to the heart to resign his cherished son at so tender an age to the severe tutors chosen for him by his wife’s relatives.

When Ohano had been selected as a wife for the youth, the father of Gonji had offered no objection. In fact, there was little that he could have found to object to in this particular matter. The girl was of a family equally honorable; her health was excellent; she had shown no traits of character objectionable in a woman. Indeed, she appeared to be an honorable and desirable vehicle to hand down the race of Saito of imperishable fame. And that, of course, was the main idea of marriage. It was a matter of duty to the ancestors, and not of desire of the individuals. So the peace-loving elder Lord Saito believed, at the time of the betrothal, that he had safely disposed of a most vexing problem.

He was dumbfounded, panic-stricken, at the turn events had taken. On all sides, harangued by that insistent lady, his wife, and also by her many relatives, he found it, nevertheless, impossible to turn a deaf ear to the impassioned pleading of the young man himself. Day and night Gonji desperately beset his father, ignoring utterly all other members of the family.

His vigil of many days before the gates of the House of Slender Pines had but strengthened the young man’s resolve. At any cost—yes, at the sacrifice of the ancestors’ honor even—he was determined to possess the Spider. Since he was assured that his passion was returned—and the assurance came through the lips of the little Omi, who had screeched the words impishly in his ear, as if in derision, that those about them might not suspect—Gonji determined to marry the geisha not alone in the thousand vague lives yet to come, but in the present one, too. He must have her now. It was impossible to wait, he told his father. If the cruel laws forbade their union, then they would go to the gods, and the less harsh heart of the river would receive them in a bridal night that would never pass away.

It is not an easy matter for a youth in Japan to marry without the full consent of his parents. Every possible obstacle had been thrown into the path of the despairing Gonji. Even his revenue was cut off completely, so that, even had he been able to move the stony heart of the geisha-keeper from the position he had taken at the behest of the powerful family, Gonji had not the means to purchase the girl’s freedom from her bonds. There was nothing, therefore, left for the unfortunate Gonji save to focus all his energies upon his father; and day and night he besieged the unhappy Ichigo.

The latter had listened, without comment, to the law as laid down by Takedo Isami, the uncle of Ohano. He had listened to the urgings of the many other relatives of his wife that he remain firm throughout the ordeal they realized he was passing through. He had given an equally attentive ear to the besieging relatives and to the stern Lady Saito, who was confident of the powerful influence of the tongue upon her lord. Then he had hearkened in silence, with drawn, averted face, to the desperate pleading of his only son, the one creature in the world that he truly loved.

While the father miserably debated the matter within himself, Gonji suddenly ceased to importune his parent. Retiring to his own chamber, he closed and fastened the doors against all possible intruders.

The relatives regarded this latest act of their fractious young kinsman as an evidence that at last his impetuous young will was breaking. They congratulated themselves upon their firmness at this time, and advised Lord Saito Ichigo to retain an unbending attitude in the matter.

The abrupt retirement of his son, however, had a strange effect upon Ichigo. He could think of nothing save the youth’s last words. He dared not confide his fears even to his wife, who was already sufficiently distracted by her task of caring for Ohano and her anxiety about her son.

Against the advice of the relatives that Gonji be left alone to fight out the battle by himself, his father forced his way into the boy’s presence. Gonji responded neither to his knocking nor to his father’s imperative call. So Lord Ichigo forced the screens apart.

In one glance the father of Gonji saw what it was the desperate young man now contemplated, for he had robed himself from head to foot in the white garments of the dead. His face was, moreover, as fixed and white as though already he had started upon the journey.

“Gonji—my dear son!”

The elder Lord Saito scarce knew his own voice, so hoarse and full of anguished emotion was it. He stood close by the kneeling Gonji and rested his hands heavily upon the boy’s slender shoulders. Gonji looked up slowly and met his father’s gaze. A mist came before his eyes, but he spoke steadily, gently:

“It is better this way. I pray you to pardon me. I am unable to serve the ancestors.”

“It is not of the ancestors I think,” said Lord Saito, gruffly, “but of you—you only, my son!”

Gonji looked at him strangely now, as though he sought to fathom the mind of his father; but he turned away, perplexed and distressed.

“You must believe that,” went on his father, brokenly. “What is best for your happiness, that is my wish, above all things. If happiness is only possible for you by giving you what is your heart’s desire, then”—a smile broke over the grave, pain-racked features of his father, as though a weight were suddenly lifted from his heart at the sudden resolve that had come to him—“then,” he continued, “it shall be!”

With a cry, Gonji gripped at his parent’s hands, his eyes turned imploringly upon Lord Saito’s face.

“You mean—ah, you promise, then—” He could not speak the words that rushed in a flood to his lips.

“Hé! (Yes!)” said Lord Ichigo, solemnly. “It is a promise.”

CHAPTER VII

HAVING determined upon the course to take, Lord Saito Ichigo summoned a council of the relatives of the family.

For the first time, possibly, since his marriage, he faced the assembled kinsfolk with the calm demeanor of one who had seized, and intended to retain, the authority properly invested in him as head of the house of Saito. His should be the voice heard! His the decision that must prevail!

In the minds of most men—Japanese men, at least—who have married at the dictates of their parents, there is always some little cherished chamber to which, despite the passing years, memory returns with loving, loitering step. So with Lord Ichigo. Now, with the fate of his beloved child in his hands, the father looked back upon his own life, and it was no reflection upon his excellent and virtuous wife that he did so with just a shade of vague regret.

The impetuous Gonji’s passionate words had not been spoken to deaf ears. Lord Saito Ichigo was determined to keep his promise to his son, whatever the result; for well he knew of the upheaval in his household which would be sure to follow.

There was, of course, Ohano to think of. Her case was not as difficult as it seemed, he pointed out to the assembled relatives. An orphan, one of a family already allied by marriage to the Saitos, they had taken her into their house at an early age. They already regarded her as a daughter. As for a daughter, they would seek, outside their own family, for a worthy and suitable husband for the maiden. In fact, it was better that Ohano should marry another than Lord Gonji, since the latter had always looked upon her as a sister, and a union between them was, to him, repugnant. That, indeed, Ichigo himself had thought at first, but he had desired to please “the honorable interior” (his wife) and the many relatives of his honorable wife.

Thus he disposed of this matter briefly, and, although the relatives looked at each other with startled glances, they had nothing to say. Something in the fixed attitude of the one they had hitherto somewhat contemptuously regarded as weak and yielding claimed now their respectful attention.

To approach the matter of the marriage of a Saito with a public geisha required not alone tact, but bravery. Hardly had the father of Gonji mentioned the matter when a storm of dissent arose. To a man—to say nothing of the countless unseen female relatives arrayed even more bitterly against her—the exalted kinsmen resented even the suggestion of such a union. So the Lord Ichigo approached the subject by wary paths.

In the first place, he pointed out boldly, the assembled ones were not actually of the Saito blood, but relatives by marriage only; and, while their counsel and advice were respectfully and gratefully solicited, even their united verdict could not finally stand out against the legal head of the house. This bold statement at the outset met a silence more eloquent of resentment than any storm of words.

It was imperative, as all had agreed, continued Lord Ichigo, that the son and heir of the house of Saito should make an early marriage. He was the last of the line. The glorious and heroic ancestors demanded descendants. It was a sacred duty to keep alive the illustrious seed.

Lord Ichigo launched into a detailed recital here of the notable deeds of his ancestors, but was stopped abruptly by the sarcastic comment of Takedo Isami, who quoted the ancient proverb, “There is no seed to a great man!” meaning none could inherit his greatness.

This cut off Ichigo’s oratory; and, hurt and disturbed at the quotation as a reflection upon his own shortcomings, he brought up squarely before them the main issue.

These were the days of enlightenment, when the iron-clad ships of war sailed the seas as far as the great Western lands; when the Japanese had accepted the best of the ways of the West; when the spirit of the New Japan permeated every nook and corner of the empire. There was one Western privilege which the men of New Japan were now demanding, and desired above all things. That they must have: the right to love!

Now, “love” is not a very proper word, according to the Japanese notion of polite speech. Hence the attitude of the relatives. Nor did the frigid atmosphere melt in the slightest before the flow of fervid eloquence that the father of Gonji brought to the defense of this reprehensible weakness.

Takedo Isami, who seemed to have assumed the position of leader and dictator among the relatives, arose slowly to his feet, and, thrusting out a pugnacious chin, asked for the right to speak. He was short, dark, with the face of a fighter and the body of a dwarf.

Admitting the right of man to love, he said it was better to hide this weakness, and, by all means, fight its insidious effort to enter the household. Only men of low morals married for love. Duty was so beautiful a thing that it brought its own reward. The proper kind of love—the lofty and the pure—declared the uncle of Ohano, came always after marriage, and sanctified the union. That the last of a great race, in whose keeping the ancestors had confidently placed the family honor, should contemplate a union of mere love and passion with a notorious and public geisha was a gratuitous and cruel insult not alone to his many living relatives—and they of his mother’s side were equally of his blood—but to the ancestors.

As the uncle of Ohano reseated himself a low murmur of approbation broke out from the circle. Gloomy looks were turned toward Ichigo, whose face had become curiously fixed. Far from weakening his resolve, his pride had been stung to the quick. Nothing, he told himself inwardly, would cause him to retreat from the position he had taken. He looked Takedo Isami squarely in the eye ere he spoke.

The honorable Takedo Isami’s remarks, he declared, were a reflection upon his own, since they concerned one whom the ancestors and the Lord Saito Gonji deemed worthy to honor. Moreover, it was both vain and reprehensible to cast a stone at a profession honored by all intelligent Japanese. It was of established knowledge that often the geishas were recruited from the noblest families in Japan. It was absurd to regard them with disdain, as apparently had latterly become the fashion. There was no great event in the history of the nation since feudal times wherein the geisha had not played her part nobly. The greatest of sacrifices she had made for her country and the Mikado. There were instances, too famous to need repeating, of the most exquisite martyrdom. The Emperor, the nobility, the priests—all delighted to do her honor. Only the ignorant assumed to despise her. She was in reality the darling and the pride of the entire nation. One would as soon dream of being without the flowers and the birds, and all the other joyous things of life, as the geisha. Who was it, then, dared to reflect upon the most charming of Japanese institutions?

Up sprang Takedo Isami, his hand raised, his dark face flushed with fury, despite the restraint he sought to exercise upon his features. His voice was under control, and he spoke with incisive bitterness.

His honorable kinsman, he loudly declared, wished but to confuse the issue. No one denied the virtues of the geisha; also the undoubted fact that many of them came from the impoverished families of the samourai. Nevertheless, charming and desirable as she was, she had not been educated to be the mother of a great race. Her lithe, twisting, dancing little body was not meant to bear children. Her light, frivolous mind was ill-fitted to instruct one’s sons and daughters. Society had set her in her proper place. It was against all precedents to take her from her sphere. One did not desire as a mate through life a creature of mere beauty, any more than one would care to take one’s daily bowl of rice from a fragile work of art which would shatter at the mere contact of the sturdy chop-sticks against it.

Such a storm of dissent and discussion now arose that it was impossible for the father of Gonji to hear his own voice, and indeed all seemed to make an effort to drown it. So he summoned servants, and coolly bade them put the amado (outside sliding walls) in place, lest the unseemly noise of wordy strife be heard by some passing neighbor—for the Japanese esteem it a disgrace to engage in controversy. Then, when the doors were in place, Lord Saito Ichigo gravely bowed to the assembled relatives, and, taking his son by the arm, bade them good night, advising that they argue the matter among themselves, without his unnecessary presence.

CHAPTER VIII

THE most dreaded moment of a Japanese girl’s life is when she enters the house of the mother-in-law. Her future happiness, she knows, is in the hands of this autocratic and all-powerful lady. Meekly the wise bride enters, with propitiating smiles and gifts, robed in her most inconspicuous gown, her aim being not to enhance whatever beauty she may possess, but, if possible, to hide it.

Far more necessary is it for her to have the goodwill of the mother-in-law than that of the husband. It is even possible for the mother-in-law, for certain causes, to divorce the young wife. In point of fact, the bride goes on trial not to her husband, but to her husband’s parents. It depends entirely upon their verdict whether she shall be “returned” or not. In most cases, however, where the marriage is arranged between the families, there is the desire to please the family of the bride; and it is more often the case than not that the parents of the husband receive the little, fearful bride with open arms and hearts.

The geisha is not educated for marriage. From her earliest years, indeed, she is taught that her office in life is merely to entertain.

In the case of the Spider, she had even less opportunity for knowing the rules that prevailed in such matters. She had been educated by the witless wife of the geisha-keeper. All her short life had been spent in aiding nature to make her more beautiful, more charming. The most important thing in life, the thing that brought rare smiles of admiration to even the sternest lips, was to be beautiful, witty, and charming.

So the Spider set out for the Saito house with a light and fearless heart, confident in the power of her beauty and witchery to win even the most frosty-hearted of mothers-in-law. Arrayed in the most gorgeous robe the geisha-house afforded, with huge flowers in her hair, her little scarlet fan fluttering at her breast, attended by her no less gaudily dressed maiden and apprentice, Omi, and followed almost to the gates of the estate by a procession of well-meaning friends and former comrades, the geisha entered the ancestral home of the illustrious family. For just a moment, ere she entered, she paused upon the threshold, a premonitory thrill of fear seizing her. She clung to the supporting hand of the garrulous Omi, whose shrill and acid little tongue already grew mute in the silent halls of the shiro (mansion).

Presently they were ushered into the ozashiki, and the Spider became conscious of the stiff and ceremonious figures standing back coldly by the screens, their gowns seeming in the subdued light of the room of a similar dull color to the satin fusuma of the walls, their shining topknots undecorated with flower or ornament, their thin, unmoving lips and eyes almost closed in cold, unsmiling scrutiny of the intruder, who seemed, like some brilliant butterfly, to have dropped in their midst from another world.

The women of the household—and these comprised the mother, two austere maternal aunts, and Takedo Ohano-san (she who was to have been the bride of Lord Gonji)—surveyed the Spider with narrow, keen eyes that took in every detail of her flaming gown, her dazzling coiffure, flower-laden, and, beneath, the exquisite little face, with wide and starlit eyes that looked at them now in friendly appeal.

There was no word spoken. Nothing but the sighing, hissing sound of indrawn breaths, as with precise formality they made their obeisances to the bride.

In vain did the wandering eyes of the geisha scan the farthermost corner of the great room in search of her lover, or even his seemingly friendly father. There were only the women there to receive her.

Dimly, now, she recalled hearing or reading somewhere that this was a fashion followed by many families—the reception of the bride at first alone by the women of the house, who were later to present her to the assembled relatives. But why this disconcerting silence? Why the cold, unfriendly, lofty gaze of these unmoving women? They stood like grave automata, regarding sternly the bride of the Lord Saito Gonji.

The smile upon the geisha’s lips flickered away tremulously; her little head drooped like a flower; she closed her eyes lest the threatening tears might fall.

A voice, cold, harsh, and with that note of command of one in authority addressing a servant, at last broke the silence.

“It is my wish,” said the Lady Saito Ichigo, “that you retire to your chamber, and there remove the garments of your trade.”

So strange and unexpected were the words that at first the Spider did not realize that they could possibly be addressed to her. She looked up, bewildered, and encountered the steely gaze of the mother-in-law. Moonlight never forgot that first glance. In the unrelenting gaze bent upon her she read what brought havoc and pain to her heart, for all the stored-up resentment and hatred that burned within the Lady Saito Ichigo showed now in her face. Her voice droned on with mechanical, incisive calmness, but always with the cruel and harsh tone of contemptuous command:

“It is my wish that your maiden of the geisha-house be returned at once to her proper home.”

She clapped her hands precisely twice, and a serving-woman answered the summons and knelt respectfully to take the order of her mistress.

“You will conduct the wife of the Lord Saito Gonji to her chamber.”

The servant crossed to the still kneeling Moonlight, and while the latter, mystified, looked dumbly at the exalted but, to her, horrible lady, she assisted the Spider to arise. Mechanically and fearfully, pausing not even at the wrathful, sobbing outcry that had broken loose from Omi, she followed in the wake of the serving-maid.

Presently she found herself in an empty chamber, unlike any she had known in the geisha-house, with its golden matting shining like glass, and its lacquer latticed walls of water-paper, and the sliding screens, rare and exquisite works of art. Here the maid fell to work upon the geisha, removing every vestige of her attire and substituting the plain but elegant flowing robes of a lady of rank.

From the geisha’s hair she removed the ornaments and the poppies. She swept it down, like a cloud of lacquer, upon the shoulders of the girl, then drew it up into the stiff and formal mode proper for one of her class. From the girl’s face she wiped the last trace of rouge and powder, revealing the rosy, shining skin beneath, clear and clean as a baby’s.

When she emerged from the hands of the maid, Moonlight looked at herself curiously in the small mirror tendered her, and for a moment she stared, dumbfounded at the face that looked back at her. It seemed so strangely young, despite its wide and wounded eyes. Though she was in reality more charming than ever, seeming like one who had come from a fresh and invigorating bath, the geisha felt that the last vestige of her beauty had fled. Within her heart arose a panic-stricken fear of the effect of the metamorphosis upon her lord. She wished ardently she were back in the noisy geisha-house, with the maidens clamoring about her and the apprentices vying with one another in imitating her. She put the mirror behind her. Her lips trembled so she could hardly compress them, and to avoid the scrutiny of the maid she moved blindly to the shoji. There she stared out unseeingly at the landscape before her, heroically trying to choke back the tears that would force their way and dripped down her dimpled cheeks like rain.

Some one whispered her name, very softly, adoringly. She turned and looked at him—her young bridegroom, with his pale face alight with happiness. She tried to answer him, but even his name eluded her. It was the first time they had been alone together, the first time they had seen each other since that night in the gardens of the Saito.

“Why, how beautiful thou art!” he stammered. “More so even than I had dreamed!”

He was very close to her now, and almost unconsciously she leaned against him. His arms enfolded her rapturously, and she felt his young cheek warm against her own.

CHAPTER IX

“THE mistake—you will admit it was a mistake?—was to have countenanced such a match at all,” said the Lady Saito Ichigo.

Her husband’s manner was less sure, less unyielding than it had been in many days. Indeed, there was a slightly apologetic tone in his voice, and he avoided the angry eyes of his spouse. He too had seen the arrival of the Spider!

“Well, well, let us admit it, then, for the sake of peace. The marriage was a mistake. But consider, our son’s happiness—nay, his very life!—was at stake.”

He lowered his voice.

“I will tell you in confidence that which I had discovered. They had already made their plans to marry.”