The Curse of Koshiu Part 14

Letters shall be despatched forthwith to the effect that 'twas a false alarm, bred of mischief and malice,--that the ronins may be disbanded, the men returned to their homes. I shall remain for the present at the Golden House, ready with my humble service when required. With you and yours, my lord, I will settle later."

With a show of exaggerated humility, which was worse than knife-stabs, and a glare at Nara, the despot departed as he came, leaving in his wake, as he scrunched away, a trail of terror and discomfiture. The sliding doors were closed in haste. For a while, the a.s.sembly remained frozen, then the unhappy Mikado heaved a deep sigh, which was met by a flutter of moaning. He was gone for the present, that was a small mercy; but then he might return at any moment, abusive and vindictive instead of caustic. The shuffling step and trembling hand. Oh, Nara, Nara! Broken reed, false friend; vain, impotent wind-bag; purblind, bl.u.s.tering dotard!

Gushing with torrents of weak tears, the Fountain relieved his pent-up anguish with trickling reproaches and sobs, to which the old Daimio listened gloomily. No doubt, he had been wrong in some measure, he admitted with hesitation, for so rapid a recovery had never entered into the complex web of his calculations. Perchance it was but the bright temporary flicker of the expiring lamp. The Fountain of Honour must not be too severe on his aged servant. Had he not kept his temper under grievous provocation, blows would have been exchanged in the holy presence, imperial prestige in the eyes of the whole court would have been lowered.

"Rubbish! A paltry excuse! Why, as he stood there, did none of you rid me of him?" groaned the Fountain, whereupon the abject circle groaned in echo.

"Of a truth, some one should have done it," bleated one; but surprise, after what they had heard, unnerved each arm; and, indeed, the Hojo was a terrible person, an ogre to terrify the doughtiest.

"Bl.u.s.ter and cowardice are sisters!" continued the lamenting Mikado.

He could never trust any of them any more--never, never--the cravens!

His chains, heavy and numbing, were riveted with adamantine links! and so forth--with a chorus of bleating.

When you know that you have done your best,--that but for some one unforeseen and ineradicable speck your carefully-wrought blade would be faultless, a shimmering masterpiece--it is vastly vexatious for people whom you despise, although they wear the aureole, to go on ungenerously drivelling anent that one undeniable blemish. Nara, as he said, had endured a great deal at the hard hand of Hojo, but to sit calmly any longer under the futile reproaches of the Holy One was beyond his stock of that patience he was so fond of recommending to others.

Moreover, is not the putting aside of what is past and unpleasant a principle approved of by sages? What is done is done. Even after the late scene, wherein a brutal keeper disported himself among his animals, and departed triumphing, all was not lost, The Fountain had been compelled to imbibe another sip of a nauseous draught with which he was so familiar, that surely it did not signify, at any rate, it should be the last His faithful Nara promised it. How the never-sufficiently-to-be-accursed Hojo had ever discovered the approaching advent of cohorts was a puzzle. But the cohorts were near by this time, and they must even make an open stand against the tyrant, since the scheme of treachery had failed. He, the domineering Hojo, would write angry and imperious letters to the approaching daimios, bidding them begone; but in the name of the Holy One letters could also be sent--secretly, of course--exhorting them to ride all the quicker, since the situation had become acute.

"I will gird my old sword again, despite my many winters," Nara concluded pompously. "Dost think that because my hair is white my heart is frozen? Under the snows of Shirane-San and Asama-Yama smoulder the hidden fires. This man's father has immured three Emperors, and he himself is preparing to depose a fourth. He has insulted me, and broken my daughter's heart. A little craft--a very little more--and the crest of the despot is laid low."

The hapless Mikado suffocated. Tears of impotent wrath welled from his august eyelids. Cowardice and bl.u.s.ter to the end, and broken reeds to lean on, while he drained the nauseous cup! Verily the banished Emperors were to be envied. The young man rose, and retired to his inner chamber, and lay p.r.o.ne with moans in darkness.

CHAPTER XV.

WILL BUDDHA SPEAK?

Meanwhile affairs at Tsu were not prospering. Sampei, tossed like a shuttlec.o.c.k, formed, as usual, a dozen resolutions daily, and broke them all. At one moment he was for the flight of O'Tei from the doomed castle--become now a h.e.l.l of untramelled debauchery--and her installation with his mother at the temple. There she would be in sanctuary, whence even her husband durst not wrest her. But then what a triumph for O'Kiku! He felt that O'Tei would never consent to a step which would be a tacit admission of defeat, for she was a Nara of pure blood, with all the pride of her race. No. She must stop where she was, and await the unrolling of events; and yet what a life was hers, compelled to remain much in her bower, lest she should be insulted by O'Kiku or the braves. As Nara hoped, the evil germ was working inwardly. A regret rose within the mind of Sampei which scorched and blackened it. Is a faithful clansman and an honest man ever justified in turning on his chief? Before there was no question of it: now he was in more than doubt. May a brother ever be pardoned for taking his brother's life? Cases of fratricide were common enough, as Nara had hinted--there were precedents galore--but then the ruling feature of Sampei's character had always been loyal honesty. The G.o.ds in their wisdom had set over him certain superiors. What would be said to him when the end came, and accounts were totted up upon the abacus, if he had rebelled? Buddha, frowning, would demand to know how he dared move out of his place, arrogantly a.s.suming to be the wiser.

His first duty was to the head of his house: surely there should be no doubt whatever about that. But what if another urgent duty had been imposed by his heart--an imperative duty, clashing with the first?

There lay the rub, a problem beyond the solving of the simple General.

And since the shocking suggestion had been spread by the wily geisha that there were unholy bonds 'twixt him and her whom it was only too plain he loved, the situation had become so strained as to fill him with foreboding and dismay. To save her fair fame ought he indeed to go? To leave her a helpless waif on this whirlpool of black wickedness was out of the question. And yet how was she benefited by his staying, since he dared not approach without compromising her? So miserable did the poor man feel, racked and torn by a difficulty with which he was incapable of coping, that the light was dark to him, his heart stone cold. He knew himself as weak as she, a ball at the foot of Fate; and so he wandered aimless and disconsolate, hearing and seeing nothing, caring not what befell, waiting--as the rudderless do--to see what would happen next.

Oh, heart of man, centre of suffering! When one is said to be heartless, 'tis looked upon as a reproach, instead of a matter for gratulation! The heart of man! 'Tis barely enough for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficiently large to satisfy its l.u.s.t, its greed, its ambition--and how it suffers!

When he sailed so blythely for Corea with his enthusiastic army, how halcyon was the world to Sampei; what wonders he was going to perform; what a career of ambition was before him. And now, ambition was dead.

Life had become Endurance. His candid spirit was warped by suspicion.

He, once so open and trustful, saw in everything a hidden meaning; in every event an occult snare.

In due course the betto brought him the letter of his chief, and he smiled with pitying derision. Was he to be taken in so easily? Had he not seen the betto ride off with the missive of O'Kiku? Had he not heard the woman herself urging the servant to speed? A puerile trick.

The letter had counselled the infatuated Daimio to remove his brother from her path, that O'Tei, left unprotected and alone, might lie at her mercy. What other reason could there be for so sudden a summons to Ki[^y]oto? With disdain he tore the letter up, resolved more firmly than ever to stick to his post, to carry out his mission to the end.

When my lord should return, there would be time enough for explanations. They were burning to be rid of O'Tei--the guilty couple.

From this crowning sin, at least, Sampei would save his brother.

It required no little resolution unblenchingly to follow the straight but rugged path. O'Kiku smarted more than ever under his cold and implacable disdain. All her arts were useless. Maddened, she strove to pique him by excesses of abandonment under his very nose, and was convulsed by fits of corroding acrimony to discover how futile were her efforts. Against all her attacks he was armed _cap-a-pie_. If my lord would but return, that she might wreak envenomed spite upon these two, whom now with her whole soul she hated! Meanwhile the only result produced by her reckless behaviour was that the samurai, for the most part, disapproved of her more and more; while Sampei, to shun the sight of one so odious, devoted himself to excursions and the chase.

Away upon the hill, with its temple and solemn arcades of greenery, as in the hum of the houses below, the cloud of anxiety was thickening.

The still dim shrine no longer lulled to devout prayer the soul of Masago. In the midst of supplication her mind turned worldwards. She yearned over her son and the tottering family. She grieved so for O'Tei, when the chatelaine arrived for prayers, that her hard face grew wondrous soft, and she marvelled at the stoniness of destiny.

Seeing now with clearer ken than in the past, when she had admired the warlike Tomoye, adored her rude lord, had almost persuaded herself to believe that all that he did was good, she began to have a denned perception of his crimes, mingled with a startled regret. He had been guilty of much that was deplorable. No-Kami had been brought up in his father's school, had from the first gone lengths that were much more regrettable, to end in deeds which she preferred not to contemplate.

He deserved to be accursed, and was accursed. Our sins, like sable ravens, return to roost. Ever since the culminating crime, events had moved so directly towards a visible goal that the finger of fate was plain. But why Sampei? Why the fair and good O'Tei, a symbol of all that was pure? These questions, so bewildering, would rise persistently to the surface. Why should these two, mixed up in this horror, without overt act of theirs, be marched as victims to the sacrifice?

She had heard from Sampei that my lord had rallied suddenly before he went to Ki[^y]oto, and this started a fresh train of thought.

O'Kiku, the baleful geisha, was at the bottom of all the trouble. She had suddenly appeared, emissary of devils, on the fatal day, and ever since had been a scourge. Thanks to an inspiration from above, the Abbess had been the means of separating my lord from his concubine. Oh, what if, Heaven relenting, the separation might become final--No-Kami himself reformed? The soul of Masago gave a great leap.

Yes, she saw light at last--the light for which she had besought so fervently. _She_ was to be the humble means of unravelling the tangle, of saving the family honour.

But how was this to be accomplished? With trepidation she remembered that she was in her sixty-first year, which, as all the world knows, is the last of the yaku doshi, or evil years, after which a woman may be at peace. During her thirty-third and forty-second (the other yaku-doshi--happily pa.s.sed) she had been very careful lest, tempted by Ratatzu, she should be capable of something dreadful, that would ruin her and hers. And now it was terrible to think that in this last year of ordeal--the one of a long life which was most beset with brambles--she was called upon to act with decision, to stand forth for the succour of the innocent, for the shriving and salvation of the guilty. This state of things would call for much vigil, much putting off of earth-trammels, and adoration of the sun-G.o.d at his rising, that her old eyes might clearly see.

The more she pondered--a slow, tall figure pacing among the moss-grown tombs, under the stately criptomerias--the more plain her duty seemed.

Thanks to the benign deities, her prayers for light were answered, and she saw. It was by Heaven's decree that the geisha had travelled hitherward, an agent for the fulfilling of a purpose pre-ordained.

Buddha, with omniscient vision, had caused her to come to Tsu for the accomplishment of the curse of the martyr. But now, through the prayers and entreaties of his humble handmaid, he had relented,--been turned from his intent. What a scaffold was the Abbess raising. When No-Kami should come back, his evil genius would be gone. This favour granted, Buddha would vouchsafe another. By force of supplication Masago would obtain that the temper of the Hojo might be changed. He would repent him of his evil ways, and atone in the future for the past. Then it should be her proud privilege to bring together again the husband and the wife. O'Tei must be taught to forgive, to break down the barrier of ice behind which her better nature had been shrouded. Warming in the radiance of a new happiness her frozen petals would unfold, give forth their sweetness, and No-Kami would come to know the treasure that he had ignorantly tossed aside. The wan cheek of the old Abbess was flushed, her dimmed eyes sparkled, as she revolved these things, devoutly giving thanks to Heaven. Is it not the greatest joy that may be tasted by mortals--the permission to intervene in the house of discord, and bring to it peace and happiness? The end was plain to the prophetic vision of Masago, but the way to it was long. The gentle O'Tei would be brought with little trouble to play her part.

The difficulty lay with the geisha. The Abbess, mindful of yaku doshi, resolved to be prudent and cautious--not precipitate; and yet, whatever had to be done must be done before the return of No-Kami to the castle. There was not time then for protracted cogitation. She would appeal in person to the siren,--speak words inspired from on high which should touch her flinty heart. Seizing her staff, the gaunt figure in its flowing draperies of c.r.a.pe descended the long flight of stairs, pa.s.sed under the torii at the bottom, and strode, buoyed by celestial fervour, along the winding street which led to the castle gate. O'Kiku was in a boat upon the river---O'Tei's own favourite shallop, which she had robbed her of, as of other things--and marvelled greatly to behold the Abbess of the temple beckoning to her from the sh.o.r.e.

Approaching, she reclined idly at the bottom of the boat, toying with some winter blossoms she had plucked; dipping, in saucy contempt of cold, the fingers of the other hand into the running water. She was m.u.f.fled in a robe of furs, her head swathed in a kerchief of thick silk; and Masago remarked that she looked worn,--had lost that freshness which had been her most piquant charm. Earnestly the Abbess spoke; pleaded for the family honour on the verge of wreck; discoursed with proud eloquence of the ill.u.s.trious house of which she was a lowly member; reminded her hearer that she, O'Kiku, also now was one of the house, in precisely the same position as she, the speaker, had been.

There were two ways open to her. Lest she should bring upon herself the reproach of having brought a great family to ruin, she must turn over a new leaf, and eschew in future the vices for which she was notorious; or, if waywardness was in her blood, she must depart, and by self-sacrifice atone for the past, and save the family. Amused with the thought that the Abbess must be mad, the geisha lay listening, a sly smile playing about her lips, until the unlucky pleader began to talk about her son. Then starting, as if bitten by an adder, uprose the concubine, and, taking up the pole, leisurely pushed off from the bank.

"Sampei, forsooth! A ridiculous old lunatic!" she scoffed, with a superb head-toss. "You must be very insane. What! You'd have me go hence and prison myself for the behoof of the pale idiot yonder? Even if I were myself mad enough to consent, my lord would never love her.

The contemptible creature is barren; whereas I, the second wife--" and with a trail of mocking merriment, and an attempt to raise a blush, she smiled at the astounded Abbess, and propelled her bark into the stream.

Masago remained standing, her tall figure mirrored in the water, her shrunken hands crossed upon her breast, amazed and troubled. What was this new factor in the embroglio? She was with child--the interloper.

There would soon be a new bond, a fresh silver link to unite more closely the pair whom she was bound to separate. The woman's influence over my lord would be greater than ever; and, all for evil as of yore.

The breach between No-Kami and O'Tei would grow wider. As in a dream--with slow gait and corrugated brow--the Abbess pa.s.sed back towards the grove, heedless of the salutations of the peasants,--of the brown urchins that plucked at her skirts. A child--a son, perhaps--that woman's son! Swiftly there pa.s.sed through her brain a sense of the results that would accrue. The wife, ambitious and unscrupulous, who was a mother, would become all-powerful. Fresh insults would day by day be heaped on the one who was not thus blessed among women. In her mind's eye Masago beheld a long train of disasters and calamities, O'Kiku the active agent. Crouched down before the altar, her chin supported by her palms, she gazed at the bronze symbol that sat so calm and still and upright, with mouth shut and eyelids closed.

"Oh, if you would vouchsafe to speak," she murmured imploringly, "one little word of guidance. One other ray of light; one little, little ray! During years of unflinching devotion has my life been given to your service. I know that I have earned nothing save, perhaps, one touch of pity!"

With sore and heavy heart the Abbess sighed, for the bronzed lips remained tight shut, the eyelids closed. He was asleep and deaf. There was no sound of comfort or of counsel.

Presently she distinguished the patter of clogs upon the outer stairs, and, after a while a man, pushing aside the curtain, stood framed in the doorway.

"Sampei!" Her boy! Was this the reply of Buddha? Ashy pale, trembling like a leaf, the old woman bent to the stones with moving lips; while the General, reverently doffing his geta, and beating his hands together, approached and knelt. She took his warm broad hand between her cold ones, and earnestly scrutinised his face. Her thoughts were in such a turmoil that, though she heard his words, they seemed to reach her ears from a distance, through a tunnel. Riding listlessly, as was his wont, with no settled purpose, he had been astonished to see the geisha in conference with his mother. What could those two have had to say to each other? Greatly marvelling, he had watched, and then turned his horse towards the temple. What ailed his mother, that her features were grey-green? Was she ill? She looked so scared and strange and terrified. Was it some ghost she saw that caused that look of awe?

Without taking her eyes from her son's, the Abbess rose, and like one in a trance led him behind the altar, down the open corridor, into her own quiet chamber. Nothing could be more simple than its furnishing.

The woodwork was unadorned, but scrupulously clean, so were the mats and screens. A plain fire-box of iron stood in the centre. Above the low dais in the tokonoma, or place of honour, there hung a single and very ancient kakemono, representing Kwannon, the thousand-handed; and under it, upon the dais, stood in a lacquered sword-rack, a dirk in its silken case.

Floating before Sampei she lifted the weapon, pressed it to her bosom, then slowly unfastening the case, drew forth the dirk, which, with a cry, he recognised. It was a precious blade, forged by Miochin himself, adorned with a hilt minutely worked with gold--a dirk which in childhood he had been wont to play with.

"My father's!" he murmured, and pressed it to his lips and forehead.

"Your father's!" echoed the Abbess, in a whisper, drawing herself to the full height of her commanding stature, and placing on the bent head of her son a trembling hand. "Your father, and _his_, wore yonder blade in many a fray, and it was never sullied with dishonour. To you, my dear son, do I surrender it. The G.o.ds have spoken. She must die!"

As pale as his mother, who looked on him now with a rapt and solemn smile, Sampei heaved a sigh of relief. _She_. His nerves tingled to his finger ends, for he had thought that the deed must be done which had so often crossed his mind, and which he had always put away from him with dread. It was not his brother--thanks to the G.o.ds for that--but the wicked concubine, whose blood was required in atonement.

Then the two sat down, and the inspired priestess spoke.

"The honour of the family was to be saved by him--Sampei. Buddha himself had deigned to settle it. He must bide his time, and wait and watch, and when occasion offered he must, with his father's dirk, slay the baleful sorceress. With his own hand must the deed be done--not be trusted to a hireling, even to a samurai. It might be some time before the fitting opportunity presented itself, for the braves, whom she still debauched, would defend her doubtless with their lives. There must not be too long delay, lest my lord No-Kami should come home. The avenging hand must be sure and steady; the result not a mere wound, but--death."