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