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ONOTO WATANNA
(Fac-simile of author’s autograph in Japanese.)

THE
WOOING
OF
WISTARIA

NEW YORK & LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS

PUBLISHERS MCMII

Copyright, 1902, by Harper & Brothers.

All rights reserved.

Published September, 1902.

I

HEN after a life that had never lacked variety the Lady Wistaria came to the years of tranquility, she was wont to say, with the philosophy that follows dangerous times: “No one, man or maid, ever really began to live before the time to which the first memory reverts.”

The first recollection of the Lady Wistaria goes back to an earlier childhood than that of most mortals. This she ascribed to its terrible and awful import. She could scarcely do more than move with the uncertain direction of babyhood, when her father, always now in her memory as gaunt, lean, haggard, tall, had taken her upon a long journey. They had travelled partly by kurumaya, and, towards the end, on foot. That is, her father had walked, carrying her on high in his arms.

When they halted at Yedo they stood amid a vast concourse of people, who remained silent and respectful against the background of the buildings, while in the centre of the road marched steadily and pompously a great glittering pageant.

Wistaria had clapped her hands with glee and delight at the mass of color, the glimmer of shield and breastplate, the prancing, snorting horses. But her father suddenly had raised an enormous hand and in a moment had stopped her delight. Wistaria lapsed into an acute silence.

Instantly she was awakened from her painful apathy by her father, who moved her higher in his arms, and turned her head slowly about with one hand, while with the other he pointed to a shining personage reclining in a palanquin borne high on the shoulders of ten stout-legged attendants.

“My daughter,” said her father’s hollow voice in her ear, “yonder rides the man who killed your mother. It is through his crime that you are orphaned and have no mother to care for you and love you. Look at him well! Hush! Do not weep or shake with fear, but turn your eyes upon him. Look at him! Look! Look! Yonder rides your mother’s murderer. Do not forget his face as long as you live. It is your duty to remember it!”

Whereupon Wistaria, who, in obedience to her father’s commands, had stared with wide eyes fixedly at the reclining noble, set up a most extraordinary cry. It was unlike that of a little child—a wild, wailing shriek, so weird and piteous that the by-standers started in horror and fear. The noble raised himself lazily on his elbow, staring across the heads of all, until his eyes rested upon the man with the child held on high. He fell back with an uneasy shrug of the shoulders.

That was the Lady Wistaria’s oldest memory. There were others, but none so vivid as this, the first of all. Even later, when she had ceased to be a child, she had been unable to pierce the mystery of her father’s life, or indeed her own.

One half of her earlier years had been spent in a small, whitewashed cottage, built on the crest of a little wind-blown hill, far enough removed from the dwellings in the village below to be entirely cut off from them.

There was a touch of the uncanny and weird about the little village, whose slender streets, ascending and descending, zigzagging up and down, disappeared among hillocks and bluffs, though built in reality in the hollow outskirts of a flourishing city at the foot of a small chain of mountains. Though the land here was green and beautiful at all times of the year, there came no one from the great city beyond to this solitary settlement, whose inhabitants bore the impress of toil, pain, and oppression.

Why her father, who, she had been told, was of noble blood, resided here on this hill-top, isolated even from the strange people who dwelt in the silent village below, the Lady Wistaria had never learned. When she had questioned her uncle and aunt, she had been frigidly informed that curiosity and inquisitiveness were degrading traits, which a maiden should strive with all her strength to overcome. Neither did she ask her father, who, taciturn and cold during her brief residence each year in his house, gave her no opportunity for winning his confidence. His love Wistaria had never dreamed of possessing.

Nevertheless, whenever she went to her father’s house, a wistful longing and yearning for him possessed her whole being, and when she departed she would hide her face in her sleeve, weeping silently, not knowing why she should weep, and scarcely conscious of the fact that she wept for lack of her father’s love.

In her father’s house there were no servants, no maids, no attendants—only one weazened, blind, and infinitely old woman, who wept tears from her sightless eyes upon her arrival, who sang and crooned to her at night in a sobbing, sighing voice, that was as sweet and pure as a girl’s.

She addressed the old woman as “Madame Mume,” and preserved always towards her the reserved and dignified attitude of the mistress to the maid. Yet her father addressed her as “Mother.” Wistaria knew the old woman was not his mother, and she could not believe she was even akin to them; for had she not always been taught that the family from which she was descended was one of the oldest and noblest in Japan, while old Madame Mume, though gentle and good, wore the garb of the poor heimin.

The other half of her childhood had been spent at the home of her uncle. Here were countless retainers and servants, besides a host of samurai, petty vassals, soldiers, peasants, and citizens, who lived upon his land and owed their direct allegiance to him.

The garden walls surrounding her uncle’s palace were tall and of massive structure, built of solid stone. Its gates were guarded by handsome, bold samurai clad in thick armor. The steel upon their breasts and shoulders glistened with a sinister sheen, and beneath their blazing helmets fierce eyes burned out their unswerving allegiance and loyalty to their lord and their scorn and defiance of all his enemies. Their coats, all emblazoned and embroidered with golden dragons, bore two crests, that of the Shogun Iyesada, and that of the powerful Daimio under whom they served, the Lord of Catzu, uncle of the Lady Wistaria.

Here in her uncle’s palace Wistaria was watched over, cared for, nurtured, and refined. Lackeys and servants were about her on all sides, ready to spring to her service. As a child she had attended a private school, kept by an old samurai, where with half a dozen other little girls she had squatted on small, padded mats before writing-tables but twelve inches high, and had been taught the intricacies of the language. Two gorgeously liveried attendants always accompanied her to and from the school-house, carrying her books, her writing-box, her kneeling-cushion, and her little table.

When she grew older she attended the elementary school. After she had left this, a silent woman of perfect manners and exquisite appearance had come to her uncle’s palace and attached herself entirely to her. With the coming of this governess, Wistaria ceased to pay her annual visits to her father’s house. He himself came to the palace instead, once every year. Upon these occasions Wistaria was brought into his presence. He would put a few stern questions to her concerning her knowledge of her duty to her parents, to which Wistaria would respond with expressions of filial submission to his will in all things.

From the governess, Wistaria learned the elegancies of conversation and how to act on meeting great personages at court. She had even been drilled in certain graces which should not fail to enchain her lover, when he, the proper one, should be chosen for her.

Now that she had reached the age of fifteen years, this perfect person had departed from the palace to teach maidens of younger years. The Lady Wistaria had arrived at an age when she could be said to have been graduated from her governess’s hands as competent to pass the rest of her life without further instruction, save that constant restraint exercised over her by her aunt, the Lady Evening Glory of Catzu.

II

HE education of a Japanese maid is not alone a matter of cultivating the mind; it is an actual moulding of her whole character. The average girl under such discipline succumbs to the hereditary instinct of implicit obedience to her dictators, and becomes like unto their conception of what she should be. But the Lady Wistaria was not an average girl. That is the reason her appearance at the court of the Shogun in Yedo created a furore. Her fresh, young beauty, her grace and bewitching charm, were a revelation to the jaded court.

The Lady Evening Glory, who had spent years of thought and preparation for this event, had warned her repeatedly that upon such an auspicious occasion she was to tread across the vast hall with downcast eyes and an attitude of graceful humility. She was on no account to look about her. While all eyes might gaze upon her, she must see no one. And this is how the Lady Wistaria carried out her instructions.

When first she began the slow parade towards the Shogun’s throne, my lady’s head was drooped in the correct pose, with her eyes modestly downcast. She had proceeded but a few paces, however, when she was thrilled by the intuition that the spectacle was worthy of any sacrifice necessary to see it. Her small head began to erect itself. Her eyes, wide open, with one great sweep viewed the splendor of the picture—the graceful courtiers, the lovely women in their costumes of the sun. A sharp pinch upon the arm brought her back to the exacting presence of the Lady Evening Glory beside her. Down drooped her head again. Gradually the eyelids fluttered. My lady peeped!

There was a low murmur throughout the hall. The waving of fans ceased a space. The Lady Evening Glory recognized the significance of that murmur, and then the hush that ensued. A tremendous fluttering pride arose in her bosom. Her experience of many years assured her that her niece’s beauty was compelling its splendid tribute.

Then the Lady Wistaria was presented to the Shogun. Her prostration was made with inimitable grace. Her beauty and charm called forth words of praise from the Shogun himself to her uncle.

A young noble, more daring and ardent than all the others, separated himself from the assembled company, and, crossing to where the Lady Wistaria stood, kissed a hyacinth and dropped it at the girl’s feet.

The Lady Evening Glory could have shrieked aloud with fury at the action of her niece, due solely to her innocence. She had no thought whence it had come. A flower in her path was not something she could tread upon, or even pass by. There in the centre of the gorgeous hall she stooped tenderly and picked up the pleading flower.

“Wild girl!” cried her aunt, in a suffocating whisper.

Wistaria started with a little cry of genuine dismay. She had forgotten in one moment the instruction of years. In her confusion she stopped short in her progress across the hall. As if impelled by some great subtle force within her, helplessly the Lady Wistaria raised her eyes. They gazed immediately into the depths of another pair, afire with an awakening passion. The next moment the young girl had blushed, red as the tints a masterful sun throws to coquetting clouds at sunset.

All the journey through, to their temporary palace in Yedo, her aunt abused the Lady Wistaria. The training of years wasted! Ingratitude was the basest of crimes! Was this the way she repaid her aunt’s labor and kindness? Well, back to Catzu they should go. It would be unsafe to remain longer in the capital. Certainly her niece had much to learn before she could continue in Yedo longer than a day.

The Lady Wistaria sat back in her palanquin, pouting. What, to be taken from the gay capital one day after arriving—before she had had the chance to meet or even speak to any one! Oh! it was cruel, and she the most stupid of maidens not to have comported herself correctly at her presentation!

“Dearest, my lady aunt,” said she, “pray you, do let us continue in the capital for the season.”

“What! and be laughed at by the whole court for our shocking and magnificently bad manners? People will declare that you have been reared in the fields with the peasants.”

“Do not, I beg, blame me for an accident, dear, my honorable aunt. It was not, in truth, my own fault.”

“Indeed!”

“Indeed, I do assure you it was the fault of that honorably silly flower.”

“TSHH!”

“And of that magnificent and augustly handsome courtier who dropped it.”

“Dropped it! My lady niece, I saw the impudent fellow throw it at your feet!”

“What! You saw! Oh, my aunt, then it is you who are jointly guilty with me!”

“What is that?” cried the aunt, angrily.

“Why, my lady, your honorable eyes were improper also.”

The Lady Evening Glory turned an offended shoulder.

“We will start to-morrow for home.”

“Oh, my lady!”

“I have spoken.”

“But, dear aunt—”

“Will you condescend to tell me, girl, who is guardian, thou or I?”

With the Lady Evening Glory, “thou” was the end of discussion.

The following day, therefore, the returning cortège set out for Catzu. As fortune would have it, the Lady Evening Glory travelled in her own train, while her niece had also her personal retinue about her. Consequently the journey was joyous for the Lady Wistaria.

When first the cortège began to move through the city a strange little procession followed in its wake. It was made up of the love-sick suitors, who, having but once gazed upon the beauty of the Lady Wistaria, wished to serve and follow her to the end of the world. The following was quite large when the cortège started. A number dropped off as they reached the city limits, then gradually the hopeless and disappointed swains with drooping heads turned back to Yedo, there to dream of the vision of a day, but to dream hopelessly.

Wherever the Lady Wistaria’s personal train travelled there lay scattered upon the ground, and blowing in the air above and about her, tiny bits of white or delicately tinted and perfumed paper. They were, alas! the love-letters and poems penned by the ardent lovers, which the hard-hearted lady, tearing into infinitesimal bits, had saucily tossed to the winds. It was thus she tossed their love from her, she would have them believe.

Hopeless, and finally indignant, therefore, backward turned these erstwhile hopeful suitors.

Sir Genji, the big samurai, who had especial charge of Wistaria’s train, reported to her, with a smile of satisfaction, that she would suffer no further annoyance, as all save one of her suitors had finally retreated.

“Bring closer your honorable head,” said the lady to Genji, who strode beside her norimono, ever and anon ordering and scolding the runners.

He brought his ear closer to the girl’s lips. She leaned over and whispered, while a pale pink flush came, fled, and grew and deepened again in her face.

“Tell me,” said she, “which of the honorably bold and silly cavaliers is it that remains?”

“The one, my lady, who, not content with despatching his love-letters and tokens to you by underlings, has had the august impertinence to deliver them himself in person.”

“Yes—ye-es—of course,” said Wistaria, blushing deliciously, “and that was honorably right. Do you not think so, my brave Genji?”

“Perhaps,” admitted the astute samurai, frowning at the same time upon a portion of the parade belonging to the Lady Evening Glory. Wistaria laughed with infinite relish.

“Well,” she said, “if my honorable aunt or august uncle were to learn of his boldness, I fear me they would command that the curtains of my insignificant norimon be drawn so tightly that I should surely suffocate.”

“Fear not,” said Genji, “I shall take immediate measures to prevent such an occurrence, my lady.”

Wistaria pouted, and frowned as heavily as it is possible for bright eyes and rosy lips to do. She toyed with her fan, opening and closing it several times.

“You are honorably over-zealous, Sir Genji,” she said.

“My lady,” he replied, “know you aught of this stranger?”

“He has a pretty grace,” said Wistaria, “and the bearing of one of noble rank. Have you not noted, Sir Genji, the beauty and richness of his magnificent attire?”

“I have, my lady. It is of that attire I would speak.”

“Do so at once, then.”

“It is the attire, my lady, of the Mori family.”

“The Mori! What! Our honorably hostile neighbors?”

“Exactly,” said Genji.

“Oh, dear!” murmured Wistaria, as she sank back in her cushions in troubled thought. After a moment her little black head again appeared.

“Gen,” she cried, “come hither once more.”

“My lady?”

“A little closer, if you please. So! Know you not, Sir Gen, that my lady aunt, and indeed also my own august father, once served this odious Mori prince?”

“I have heard so, my lady.”

“Well, then, truly all of the members of this honorable clan cannot be augustly bad!”

Sir Genji could not restrain a smile.

“Indeed, my lady, this Choshui people have many worthy and admirable qualities.”

“You are a very clever fellow, my dear Sir Gen,” said Wistaria, smiling engagingly now, “and I shall bespeak you to my honorable uncle. And now—now—if you would really wish to serve me, do you pray show some kindness—some little insignificant courtesy to this unfortunate Mori courtier. Perhaps he may have some good attributes.”

“Undoubtedly, my lady.”

“And do be careful to allow my lady aunt to know naught concerning him, for she, having come from this Mori, is actually more sour against them than we, you and I, Sir Gen, who have not indeed.”

Just then my lady heard a familiar tramp to the left of her norimono. There were but few horses in the cortège, and most of them had gone ahead with her father’s samurai. Consequently the beat of a horse’s hoofs was plainly to be heard. The Lady Wistaria wavered between lying back in her carriage and drawing about her discreetly the curtains, or sitting up and feigning indifference to the horseman.

The rider had fallen into a slow trot behind her norimono, and seemed to be making no effort either to overtake or ride beside her. For the space of a few minutes the Lady Wistaria, with a bright, expectant red spot in either cheek, waited for some sign on the part of the rider. His stubborn continuance in the background at first thrilled, then irritated, and finally distracted her. My lady put her shining little head out of the vehicle, then, leaning quite far out, she looked backward. Instantly the rider spurred his horse forward. In a flash his hitherto melancholy face became luminous with hope. A moment later he was beside the lady’s norimono. Before her officious maid had time to draw the curtains a love-letter had fallen into my lady’s lap.

It was possibly the fiftieth appeal he had penned to her. Hitherto he had borne the bitter chagrin of seeing the torn bits of paper fall from a little hand that parted the silken curtains of her gilded norimono and scattered them to the winds.

The lover rode within sight of his mistress’s palanquin until the first gray darkness of approaching night crept like an immense cloud over the heavens, chasing away the enchanting rosy tints that the departing sun had left behind.

Undaunted by the fact that his letter received no response, encouraged rather by the fact that it had not shared the fate of its predecessors, the lover now set himself to the task of composing more ardent and flowery epistles. What time was not occupied in eagerly watching for the smallest glimpse of the little head to appear was spent in writing to her. He wrote his love-letters and poems with a shaking hand even while his horse carried him onward. He wrote them by the light of the moon when the train halted for the night. He wrote them in the early dawn before the cortège had awakened. And he delivered them at all hours, whenever he could obtain opportunity.

Though the Lady Wistaria by this time must have acquired a goodly quantity of useless literature, she took no measure to relieve herself of the burdensome baggage. Nevertheless the lover began to despair. A few hours before they reached her uncle’s province he delivered his last missive. It was really a very desperate letter. At the risk of his life—so he wrote—he would follow her not only to her uncle’s province but into the very grounds surrounding his palace—into the palace itself if necessary. He besought her that she would send him one small word of favor.

He waited in impatient excitement for a response to this last fervid appeal. He felt sure she must at least deign to express her wish in the matter. But when they reached the province he saw her carried across the borders without having given him one sign or token.

In his despair he dismounted, and was divided between returning to Yedo or continuing his hopeless quest.

As he remained plunged in his gloomy reflections and uncertainty of purpose, an enormous samurai touched him sharply upon the arm. In his irritation he was about to resent the fellow’s familiarity, when he perceived a little roll of rice-paper protruding from his sleeve. Stealthily the samurai reached out his arm to the lover. The latter seized the scroll eagerly.

III

HE palace, and indeed the whole domain of the Lord Catzu, presented the appearance of being constantly armed as though for attack, a not uncommon thing in the latter days of feudalism. The Shogun had been artful in his disposal of the various lords of the provinces. Families attached personally to him were stationed in provinces lying between those administered by families friendly to the Emperor. Thus none of the Emperor’s friends could meet to revolt against the Shogun.

So it happened that while the Lord Catzu was one of the most intimate and confidential of the advisers of the Shogun, his neighbor, the old Prince Mori, Daimio of the province of Choshui, desired to see the Mikado once more, the real, instead of the nominal, ruler of Japan.

Consequently the two neighboring clans, while displaying extravagant courtesy towards each other in public, were in reality unfriendly. Only during that portion of the year when the Shogun’s edict ordered a Yedo residence for all daimios, did the lords of the provinces meet one another, and that under the Shogun’s eyes in his Yedo seat of government. In the capital they simulated suavity and cordiality, but once back at their provincial capitals they preserved towards each other an attitude of polite defiance which made all intercourse between them impossible save that of the sword, when their respective samurai and vassals, coming in contact with one another, fought out their lords’ political differences.

Imbittering still more the feeling existing naturally between the Mori and Catzu clans, there was a personal element in the situation. When Catzu had first been made lord of the province he had met on a visit to the Shogun’s Yedo court the Lady Evening Glory, whose brother and guardian (she being an orphan) was a young samurai in the service of the Prince Mori. Having fallen a victim to the lady’s beauty and charms, the lord of Catzu was determined to have her for wife despite the opposition of the Mori Prince. Bold, brave, fearless, and with a grand contempt for the power of his rival, the Lord Catzu had carried off the fair lady from his neighbor’s dominions, though it was generally understood that both the lady herself and her samurai brother lent their assistance to the young lord. The young samurai, incurring thereby the deep displeasure and enmity of his Prince, was deprived of his title and estates and sent into exile upon the first convenient pretext. Strange tales told without shadow of authority diversified the nature of the crime for which the samurai had been exiled, but the two lords remained silent. All who had been concerned in the affair were commanded to the same silence by the Shogun.

Whatever were the many reasons responsible for the constant attitude of antagonism of these two clans towards each other, the lords carefully guarded their lands—more particularly those in the vicinity of their palaces—with all the rigor of a fortress prepared for the fiercest onslaught. Seemingly unapproachable and impenetrable as were the grounds of the Catzu palace, yet there must have existed at some spot in their watchful walls a vulnerable point, the heel of the stone Achilles.

A courtier, by his dress and demeanor plainly a member of the Mori household, lingered in the private gardens of the palace. The day had long since folded its wings of light, but an early March moon was enveloping the land in an ethereal glow. The courtier remained under the friendly shadow of a grove of pine-trees. His eyes were cast upon the stately Catzu shiro (palace). It seemed as though the moon-rays had singled out the graceful old castle and was bathing it tenderly in a halo of soft light.

It was cold, not bitterly so, but sharply chill, as it is at night betwixt the winter and the spring. But unconscious of the chill, erect and graceful, the courtier leaned against a tree-trunk, his arms crossed over his breast, his eyes full of moist sentiment, drinking in the beauty of the night scene, which had an added enchantment for him, a man in love.

All about him, before, behind, and around him, graceful pine-trees raised their slender, pointed heads up to the silver light. In the distance, like a strange, white mirage set in the moonlit sky, a snow-capped mountain seemed hung as in mid-air. The grass beneath his feet was young and intensely soft, with dewy moisture upon it.

A nightingale on the tip of a tall bamboo sang with such passionate sweetness that it brought the lover out from the shelter of the shadow. Quivering with emotion, his soul responding and vibrating to the song of love, he strode into the light of the moon. Unmindful of the danger of his exposure to possible observation, he drew forth from the bosom of his haori a little roll of rice-paper. Once more he read it through, and yet once again.

“My Lord,—I write this augustly insignificant letter to you, trusting that your health is good. Also the health of all your honorable relatives and ancestors.

“I have received your most honorably magnificent compliments. Accept my humblest thanks.

“Now I deign to write unto you, beseeching you to abandon so foolhardy a purpose as to follow me to my uncle’s home. I would feign warn you that my uncle’s guards are fierce and ofttimes cruel, and to one wearing the garb of a hostile clan, I fear they would show no mercy. Therefore I beseech you, do you pray abandon your honorable purpose.

“Also condescend to permit me to add, that if you must indeed truly attempt so hazardous an undertaking, I would beg to inform you, that though the grounds are surrounded by such great walls that I fear me not even a tailless cat might climb them, and also the gates are guarded by the fiercest samurai, nevertheless, on the south there is a small river. Mayhap you will hire a boat. Then do you come up this honorable river, keeping close to the shore, and I do assure you that you will discover a break in the south wall, which leads into the gardens surrounding the palace.

“My lord, my uncle’s guards are not so vigilant before sunrise, as I myself have ofttimes remarked when I have arisen early of a morning and have looked from my casement, which is also on the south side of the palace, facing the river and the outlet thereto.”

The nightingale paused in its song, and then broke out again, its long, piercing trill filling the night.

The lover returned to the shelter of the pine grove, and, throwing himself upon the grass, drew his cape close about him. Leaning his head upon his hand, he gave himself up to his dreams.

IV

HE Lady Wistaria arose with the sun. Without waiting to pin back the long, silken hair which hung like a cloud of lacquer about her, she stole softly to the casement of her chamber.

The perfume which stole up to her was sweeter and stronger far than that wafted from the trees laden with the dews of the early morning. Yet the trees were bare of blossoms and would not bloom for a month to come. Nevertheless the ledge of Wistaria’s casement was piled with the living spring blossoms of plum and cherry. She could not but caress them with her hands, her lips, her eyes, her burning cheeks. With little, trembling hands she searched among them and found what she sought—a scroll—a narrow, thin, wonderful scroll, long, yet only a few inches in width, with golden borders down the sides, and the faint, exquisite tracings of birds and flowers intertwined among the words that leaped up at her almost as though they had spoken. It was a poem to her—her grace, beauty, modesty, loveliness, its theme:

“A stately shiro was her home;

In royal halls she shone most fair,

From tiny feet to golden comb,

In her sweet life what is my share?

“Oh, lovely maid, my moon thou art;

O Fuji san, thou hast my heart!”

There were many other verses, but the Lady Wistaria was too much moved to have either the vision or the mind to read beyond the first stanza. As became her rank and the painful tuition of years, she should have pushed very deliberately the flowers from her sill and torn the scroll into ragged pieces, a chastisement prescribed by every etiquette for the temerity of a presumptuous lover.

But the Lady Wistaria did nothing of the sort. She gathered the flowers tenderly and took them in. Then she came back to the casement, and, leaning far out, gazed with piercing wistfulness out into the little garden below. For some minutes she waited, the patience of her caste fading away gradually into that of the impatience of her sex.

A voice beneath her casement! She leaned farther over. A young man’s eager, glowing face smiled up at her like the rising sun. Again the Lady Wistaria forgot the training of years. Her trembling voice floated down to him:

“Pray you do consider the perils in which you place yourself,” she implored.

“I would pass through all the perils of hell so I might reach you in the end,” he fervidly whispered back.

“Oh, my lord, look yonder! See, the sun is pushing its way upward above the mountains and the hill-tops. Do you not know that soon my uncle’s guards will pass this way?”

“Under the heavens there is nothing in all this wide world worthy as a gift for you, dear lady. That you have deigned to accept my honorable flowers and my abominably constructed poem has given me such strength that I am prepared to fight a whole army of guards. Ay! And to give up readily, too, my life.”

“And if you love me,” she replied, “you will guard with all your strength that life which you are so recklessly exposing to danger.”

“Ah, sweetest lady, can it be true then that you condescend to take some concern in my insignificant existence?”

She made no response other than to pluck from the climbing vine about her casement one little half-blown leaf and drop it at his feet.

As he stooped to pick up the leaf a form interposed itself, and a half-grown man looked him steadily in the face. With a little cry the Lady Wistaria vanished from her casement.

Meanwhile the intruder, instead of being the aggressor, was defending himself against the flashing blade of the infuriated lover. Too proud to call for aid, the youth opposed to the lover found himself outmatched before the skill and fire of the other. So thinking caution better than valor, he flung his sword at the feet of the lover. The latter, picking it up by the middle, returned it to his opponent with a low bow of utmost grace. Then with one hand on his hip and the other holding his sword, he addressed the youth.

“Thy name?”

“Catzu Toro. And thine?”

“Too insignificant to be spoken before one who bears so great a name as thine,” returned the other, bowing with satirical grace.

“How is that?” cried Catzu Toro—“insignificant? What, one in thy garb and with thy skill of swordsmanship?”

The victorious one, shrugging his shoulders imperceptibly, again bowed with a smile of disclaimer.

“May I be permitted,” he said, “to put one question to you, my lord, and then I am perfectly prepared to give myself up to your father’s guards, though not, I promise you, without a struggle, which I doubt not your vassals will long remember.” And he blithely bent the blade of his sword with his two hands.

“Nay, then,” cried the youth, impetuously, “You do me injustice. I am ready to swear protection to one who has acted so bravely as thou. But a question for a question, is not that fair?”

“Assuredly.”

“Very well, then. You serve the Prince of Mori?”

“In a very humble capacity,” returned the other, guardedly.

“In what capacity?” inquired the young Toro, quickly.

“Ah, that is two questions, and you have not even deigned to listen to my one.”

“Speak,” said the youth, curbing his curiosity and impatience.

“The Lady Wistaria—she is your sister?”

“My cousin,” answered the other, briefly.

“Will you tell me how it is possible for one unfortunately attached to an unfriendly clan to pay court to your cousin?”

“Two questions, that!” exclaimed Toro, promptly, whereat they both laughed, their friendship growing in proportion to their good-humor.

“Now,” said Toro, “I will answer whatever questions you may put to me, if you in return will only satisfy my mind concerning certain matters which I am perishing to know.”

“A fair exchange! Good!”

“Then,” said Toro, unloosening his own cape from his hips, “pray throw this about you, for I fear you will be observed by my father’s samurai. Even my presence,” he added, with a sigh, “could hardly protect you, for I, alas! am under age.”

“Is it possible?” said the stranger, with such affected surprise that the boy flushed with delight.

“Now, my lord”—he hesitated, doubtfully, as though hoping the other would supply the name—“now, my lord, let me explain to you why I truly sympathize with you in your love for one who must seem impossible.”

“Not impossible,” corrected the lover, softly, thinking tenderly of the Lady Wistaria’s fears for him.

“I, too,” confessed Toro, “am in the same plight.”

“What!” cried the lover, in dismay; “you also adore the lady?”

“No,” replied Toro, shaking his head with sad melancholy; “but I have conceived the most hopeless attachment for a lady whom I may never dream of winning.”

“Then I am much mistaken in you. I thought, my lord, that you were not only a brave man, but a daring knight.”

“But you cannot conceive of the extremity of my case,” cried the youth, piteously, “for consider: the lady I love not only belongs to our rival clan, but is already betrothed.”

“Well, but betrothals have been broken before, my lord, and the days of romance and adventure are not altogether dead in the land.”

“Ah, yes, that is true, but my rival is not only more powerful, but in every respect more prepossessing and attractive.”

“Indeed? Well, all this interests me very much. Still, I must say, my lord, that though I am in the service of the Mori, I have not seen the knight or courtier who could prove so formidable a rival to you, either in graces or rank—for are you not the son of the great lord of this province?”

“And has not our neighboring lord a son also?”

“Wh—what!” cried the stranger, darting backward as though the youth had dealt him a sharp and unexpected blow; then scanning the other’s face closely, “You do not mean—the Prince—?”

“Yes—the Prince Keiki. That swaggering, bragging, noisy roustabout, who bears so many cognomens.”

“Hum!” said the other. “They call him the Prince Kei—, truly—”

“Yes,” said the youth, jealously, “and also ‘Hikal-Keiki-no-Kimi’ (the Shining Prince Keiki).”

“You have told me strange news indeed,” said the Mori courtier. “I did not know of the betrothal of our Prince. It is very sad, truly.”

“Sad! To be betrothed to the Princess Hollyhock sad?”

“For you, my lord,” replied the other, with a slight smile.

Toro doubled his hands spasmodically as he frowned with the fierceness of a samurai, that the other might not observe the soft moisture of a woman in his eyes.

“Now let me tell you a secret,” said the stranger, touching his arm with confidential sympathy. “Upon my word, the Princess Hollyhock is not betrothed to the Prince Keiki.”

“My lord, you do not say so! Are you sure?”

“As sure as I am that I am here now.”

“Oh, the gods themselves must have sent you hither!” cried the youth. “Will you not accept my protection and constant aid in your suit for my cousin?”

“You are more generous than—”

“Your Prince, you would say,” interrupted Toro, bitterly.

“—than the gods, I was about to remark,” said the other, gravely. “Now let us form a compact. You on your side will promise me protection and aid here on your estates, and I will swear to you that you shall win and wed the Princess Hollyhock.”

“I have a small house yonder, my lord,” cried the impulsive youth, excitedly. “It is kept by my old nurse. Come you with me thither. I shall lend you whatever clothes you may require and you shall remain here as long as you wish. I will introduce you to my family as a friend—a student from my own university in Kummommotta. Then you can make suit to Wistaria, and, having once wed her, who can separate you, let me ask?”

“Not the gods themselves, I swear!” cried the other.

“And your name—what shall I call you?”

The courtier hesitated for the first time.

“My name is insignificant. It is a Mori name, and therefore dangerous in your province.”

“You must assume another, then.”

“Hum! Well, what would you suggest, my lord?”

“How will Shioshio Shawtaro do?”

“Not at all. It has a trading sound.”

“Ho! ho! How about Taketomi Tokioshi?”

“Too imperious.”

“Fujita Gemba?”

“No, no.”

“Then do you choose yourself.”

“My lord, waiving aside all our political differences, do you not think it would be loyal for me to take the name of one of my own people?”

“What, a Mori name? You are very droll, my lord. Why not keep your own name, then?”

“Ah, but it is not the Mori family name I wish to assume, but a surname.”

“It might be dangerous.”

“Oh, not without the family name and title attached. Suppose I take the name of Keiki?”

“What! The name of my rival!”

“My prince, my lord,” said the other, bowing deeply.

“Nevertheless my rival.”

“Not at all; and if he were so, why not grant him this little honor, seeing you are to worst him in the suit for the lady?”

“That is true.”

“The name will sound vastly different with another family name attached. Suppose I assume the name of Tominaga Keiki? That is somewhat different from Mori Keiki, is it not?”

“Somewhat.”

“Then Keiki is my name.”

“Kei—Very well. Let it be so.”

V

HE Lord of Catzu received his son’s friend with hospitality dictated by his fat and good-humored nature, beseeching him to consider the Catzu possessions as his own. Keiki (as he had called himself), on fire to make use of the advantage he had now gained at the outset, was met by two unexpected obstacles.

In the first place, the Lady Wistaria was hedged about by an almost insurmountable wall of etiquette and form. Though the lover blessed all the gods for the privilege of being in her presence each day, yet, impetuous, warm-blooded, and ardent, he could not but chafe at the distance and the silence which seemed impassable between them.

Wistaria, he thought, might just as well have been a twinkling star in the heavens above him as to be placed at one end of the guest-room, her lips sealed in maidenly silence, while at the other end, in the place of honor, must sit he, the august guest, inwardly the burning lover. Between them interposed her honorable relatives and certain members of her uncle’s household, separating the lovers with their extravagant politeness and words of gracious compliment and hospitality.

In the second place, the pilot upon whom he had relied for safe conduct through the icy forms which kept him from his mistress had deserted him perfidiously. Toro, the reckless and foolhardy, his imagination fed by the daring and sang-froid of the Mori clansman, his own heart aflame with as deep a passion as his friend’s, had borrowed his dress and departed for Choshui, there to risk all chance of danger with the bravery, but without, alas! the wit, of the Mori courtier.

To offset these two hardships, the lovers saw a gift sent by the gods in the indisposition of the Lady Evening Glory. After the long and tedious journey from the capital, the lady, who was of a delicate constitution, retired to her apartments with a malady of the head and tooth. In point of fact, the Lady Evening Glory suffered from neuralgia. The lovers prayed that her illness might be long and lingering, though Wistaria, having besought her to keep to her bed as long as possible that relapse might be avoided, tempered her prayer with a petition to her favorite god that her aunt’s illness might be unattended with pain.

With the Lady Evening Glory, the vigilant mentor of Wistaria, safely out of the way, the girl found no cause for despair. This was the reason she returned her lover’s pleading and ofttimes reproachful glances with smiles, which, but for the joy of seeing them, he would have thought heartless. The joy of Wistaria’s smile almost compensated for the pain of her lover’s poignant surmise that her heart had no pity for the woes of her adorer.

And, indeed, at this time there was little else in the girl’s heart save a singing joy, a rippling flutter of new emotions and thrills, which she, too innocent as yet to recognize their full import, cared only to welcome with delight, to encourage, to foster and enjoy to the uttermost.

Between Wistaria and her uncle there was utmost confidence and love. The young girl occupied that place in his heart which would have been held by the daughter denied him by the gods. The mantling flush, the ever-shining eyes, now bright with joy that would overflow, now moist with the unbidden tears that spring to the eyes when the heart is disturbed with an emotion more sweet than expression; these—the change which young love alone can produce in a maiden—he was quick to perceive.

The Lord Catzu’s own marriage had been most romantic, and if his lady had lived down frigidly to the world, her husband at least had retained his sentimental remembrance of the adventurous escapades attending it.

Such were the opportunities of life to the daimio of a province at peace that, to all outward appearances, Catzu was too indolent, too listlessly, luxuriously lazy and preoccupied with his own pleasures to observe his niece’s condition of heart. But the Lord Catzu, with all his placidity, was astute. Beneath his lazy eyelids his own small eyes missed little that passed before him.

In fact, it was not long before he became aware of the attachment between the young people. The courtier, he knew, bore an assumed name, for Toro had labored with awkwardness when he endeavored to invent a lineage for the friend whose appearance at the Catzu palace without the customary retinue of servants or retainers had convinced its lord that he had discovered a tinge of that delightful mystery which but added to the favor of the unknown in the eyes of the sentimental Lord of Catzu. In addition, it was the mode for young nobles of the realm to undertake courtship over an assumed name, so that an air of romance might be lent to their love affair. As to the young man’s rank there could be no question, since his manners and breeding, his grace of person and charm of speech, were caste characteristic. Looking secretly with high favor upon the young man, Catzu considered how he might aid the lovers.

Slothful and deliberate in all he undertook, Catzu might provoke impatience, but his gradual accomplishment of his ends was gratifying. Just as he took his time in the serious business of life, so was he leisurely in the pursuit of his pleasures. As a consequence the lovers for a time were kept in an agony of waiting and suspense.

Keiki, maddened and irritated by the constant presence of the smiling Lord Catzu, who in his opinion stood between him and his heart’s desire, once more fell to writing imploring letters and poems to the Lady Wistaria which made up in epithets of endearment what they lacked in rhetoric. He prayed her to find some means by which he might be with her alone, if only for a fraction of a minute. The one word “Patience,” written upon a little china plate, so minutely that he could scarcely decipher it, was the reply brought by the Lord Catzu, with the information that the Lady Wistaria herself had painted the plate for their august guest.

Meanwhile Catzu, cognizant of every sigh, every appealing expression, every significant motion, laid his plans carefully for the impatient suitor’s happiness. Certainly within the walls of the palace itself there was no hope of solitude for the lovers. Pretexts for out-door pleasure-parties were never wanting in the warmer season. Local fêtes, the birth of each new flower, family events—all these were sufficient invitation in themselves for such convivial parties as delighted the soul of the Lord of Catzu, and could not have failed in their chance opportunity for dual solitude.

At this time of the year, alas! there was neither snow nor moon nor flowers to serve a pretext. A series of heavy rainfalls, most distressing and persistent, was the only fugitive before approaching spring. Yet even the rain-gods have a limit to their tears, and, after all, the rains preceding the first month of spring are ofttimes the very means by which the land is cleansed ere it bursts into beauty and bud.

Not so interminable as it seemed to them was the lovers’ waiting. Three short days—yet how long!—and then the sun which had struggled for ascendency over the troubled heavens rose up proudly triumphant. The thunders retreated into tremulous growls of defeat; the gray-black clouds rolled away before the blinding flashes of the sun-rays, flitting like ghosts before the dawn. An immense rainbow, spanning the entire heavens, sprang out of the skies, a signal of the sun-god’s victory.

What mattered it that the land was barren as yet of flowers? The grass was green and the trees almost bursting in effort of emulation. Catzu, having satisfied himself that the moisture on the grass was but the dew of spring, forthwith devised a small party. It consisted of his lady niece and the august guest of the household, who was graciously entreated to accompany them, and who accepted with an alacrity almost lacking courtesy.

With but two attendants, the party set out from the palace. Taking a small boat, they made a swift pilgrimage up the graceful river to a small island where a picturesque tea-house and gardens, with twenty charming geishas, made a fairyland for lovers.

To receive so early and unheralded a visit from the august lord of the province threw the geishas into a delighted panic of excitement. Their attendants were seen rushing hither and thither throughout the place, hastily making it suitable for the reception of the exalted guests.

Hastening down to the beach, the chief geisha herself apologized for the island’s condition. The Lord of Catzu went to meet her. For his guest to be received without preparation, he explained to Keiki, would be unfitting. Consequently he begged him to remain on the beach, while he himself proceeded with the chief geisha to the tea-house to issue instructions.

The stolid and indifferent lackeys who had attended the party returned to the boat, where they fell into conversation with the oarsmen.

At last the lovers were alone.

For a long moment Keiki and Wistaria looked into each other’s eyes. They were safe from all observation, for the gardens, and indeed the whole island, was of that rock-and-pebble-built variety favored by the Japanese. Behind and around them they were screened by quaint, grotesque rocks of natural form and immense size, carried from a mountain to this tiny island, placed there in miniature to simulate nature.

Nevertheless Keiki, the impatient and ardent, now at the crucial moment, had naught to say. He had confessed his love in his letters; she had admitted tacitly her own. Still they did not embrace, or even touch each other. Culture is strong in Japan, where also is the fire of love. So these two but looked into each other’s faces, all their hearts’ eloquent passion in their eyes. Wistaria’s eyes did not fall before his tender gaze. Only a rose-red flush crept softly like a magic glow over the oval of her cheeks, tingeing her little chin while accentuating her brow’s whiteness.

Without a word her lover dropped upon one knee, lifted the long sleeve of her kimono, and buried his face within its fabric.

Five minutes later, hand in hand, they were standing on the same spot. They were watching the river, swollen by recent rains, as it burst over the rocks beyond, bounding down the river-bed, rolling swiftly along, twisting, curving, and winding about the sinuous form of the island’s shore, holding it in the grudging love of the water for the land. The water was blue-green in color, save where the sunbeams reflected its own light in glistening gleams of quicksilver, ever moving, ever playing, while the shores on either side threw shadows of their trees and rocks upon it. As it ran busily, merrily along, now and then lapping the shore and leaping to their very feet, it seemed a living thing which babbled and laughed with an inward knowledge of their joy, and also sighed and wailed with a prophetic undercurrent of coming woe.

The touch of their hands close clasped together made them tremble and quiver. Their eyes met to droop away and meet again in the vivid recognition of their own innocent happiness. They could not speak, because their hearts had laid claim to their lips and sealed them in a golden silence.

Then, after a long interval, Keiki found his voice. If he spoke of the flowing river at their feet, it was not the river itself that absorbed his mind, but because in it, as in all things beautiful in life, he now saw reflected the image of his beloved.

“The honorable river,” he said, “flows high at this season, but before the summer dies it will be but a thin line, very still, very quiet.”

“Yes,” said Wistaria, tremulously, “but the lotus will spring up in its honorable waters, and if the river should continue to rise and rush onward like this, I fear me the water-flowers would perish and the noise of its ceaseless flow would drown the voices of the birds, which make the summer speak.”

“That is true,” said Keiki, “but when the summer passes then the flowers must still die, and we may no longer hear the singing of the birds. Then still the river will be silent and motionless—perhaps dead.”

Keiki sighed with the moodiness of love attained. A gentle depression stole from him to the Lady Wistaria.

“Alas! my lord,” she murmured; “it is so with all things in life that are beautiful. They vanish and die like the flowers of summer.”

“Then,” said Keiki, “swear by the god of the sea, by whose waters we now stand, that our love shall never die, and that for the time of this life, and the next, and as many after as may come, you will be my flower wife, and take me for your husband.”

“By all the eight million gods of heaven, and by the god of the sea, I swear,” said Wistaria.

VI

HE air was balmy, the sky of a cerulean blue, the Dewdrop gardens were sweet with a strange charm and mystery all their own. Pebbles, sand, and stone, were cunningly displayed and mingled to create the illusion of an approach to a giant sea. In themselves the wondrous rocks were so fashioned as to form a landscape wherein neither foliage, trees, nor flowers were necessary. Small, grotesque bridges, made of rare rocks in their natural form, undefaced by hammer or chisel, spanned the miniature rivers, which, snakelike, crept and threaded their way in and out of the rock island. Suddenly appearing caverns yawned wide agape, only to show on closer approach that they were naught but gigantic rocks, hollow within.

Though the gardens were bare of foliage, yet the spot shone out like a jewel set in a magic river. Here was the perfection of art, that art so complete that without the very things of nature which seem necessary to a landscape, the cunning hand of man had fashioned the like out of the hard and jagged substance of stone and rock. And in this the hand of the Creator had aided, since the very rocks which formed this precious and priceless island, the pride and wealth of the Lord of Catzu, had been untouched by the tool of the artisan, for, having been gathered together from all parts of the country, they were planted in their natural form upon this island jewel.

Across the narrow river the shores were green, while beyond the silent surface of the moats the granite walls of the Catzu palace rose to a height, white and stately, tipped with golden towers and peaks that were taller than the cedars and the pines centuries old.

A stir of expectation thrilled the Dewdrop tea-house, and then a clear, shrill voice cried aloud:

“The Lady Wistaria passes into the honorable hall.”

The twenty geishas prostrated themselves at my lady’s feet. Gracefully she returned their courtesy, begging that they would serve her and her august guest, the Lord Tominaga Keiki, with refreshment.

The geishas, at this period in history occupying a high and dignified position in society, expressed their wish to serve their lady for the rest of their lives.

They brought the lovers fresh fruit, shining and luscious, and drink from a well of sweetest and purest water. Humbly apologizing for the honorable meanness of the refreshment, the chief geisha prayed that they would condescend to pardon her, for not even in her dreams had she imagined that the gods would favor her so soon in the season with such august guests.

But the lovers only smiled benevolently upon her, and insisted that never, no, never in all the honorable days of their lives, had they been blessed with more gracious refreshment. Whereat the geisha, with many low, grateful obeisances, retired.

The lovers sighed as in one breath.

“Once more alone,” said Keiki, blissfully reaching over the little table and laying his own hands softly upon those of the girl. “How gracious the gods!”

“Of a truth,” said Wistaria, smiling up at him; “we must repay the gods.”

“We must, indeed. What shall we do? Build a thousand temples to—well, which one?”

“I consider!” quoth Wistaria, thinking very seriously. Then, suddenly, with a little, silvery laugh: “I have it. Let us deify my own august uncle. Is he not the god who befriends us?”

“Not consciously,” said Keiki, “for I doubt not my Lord of Catzu would fume and curse me roundly did he know I took advantage of his honorable disposition to sleep.”

Wistaria laughed softly.

“Now I am quite ready to swear,” she said, “that of late my honorable uncle is perfectly conscious when he sleeps.”

“Pray tell me,” cried Keiki, starting.

The girl nodded merrily.

“Will you tell me, then, how it is possible for one to fall asleep in a small, rocking boat? Could you or I do so, my Lord Keiki?”

“Oh, not you or I; but your honorable uncle is divinely lethargic.”